The problem you identify isn't with the electoral college but with the centralisation into the federal government of states powers in a way that is directly against the federalist and Republican ideas of the constitution.
The electoral college is not the problem. If we remove that, than states that lose representation they were promised when they joined should have the right to secede.
The electoral college system has obviously been a terrible idea for years. Plenty of people also vocally complained about it in 2000, for example.
But changing it requires changing the Constitution, which requires a supermajority of state legislatures—and the electoral college shifts power from citizens and the federal government to states.
Destroying the Electoral College would be one more step in destroying the federal nature of the Unites States. Perhaps you think that's a good thing, but I think it's a terrible idea: I think that we should be more, not less, federal. What works for the people of Massachusetts is not what works for the people of California, or the people of Wyoming.
I'd like to see state legislatures selecting electors again.
Also, the Constitution states, 'No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.' Has Congress consented to this interstate compact?
The electoral college is antiquated and premised on an idea that didn't pan out. Specifically that people would have a primary allegiance to their state and not the federation. This was true since World War I at the latest, and Reconstruction at the earliest.
Quite frankly it's asinine that my town has more population and less representation than 6 states.
Seriously, if the problem with the electoral college is disparate per capita representation and you're saying that needs to be fixed then it follows that the Senate is also a problem and we shouldn't have an upper and a lower legislative chamber at the federal or any level. Yet these systems have worked for centuries.
The fight against the electoral college is one of those things that misses the forest for the trees. The real problem is that too much power has been vested in the federal government (and in the executive branch specifically), and too much power has been taken from the states. People would care a lot less about how the president gets elected if he didn't have so much control over the entire country.
The point of the Senate and Electoral College is that states are supposed to have quite a bit of sovereignty, and so more populous states shouldn't be able to run roughshod over less populous ones. Your suggestions completely miss that point.
Under the Articles of Confederation all decisions were made by a vote of the states. The Constitution has a very different structure. Most of the power resides in Congress that the people control. The Electoral College is solely selecting the executive not deciding Constitutional questions.
The people are represented by the House and assert their will that way. The apportionment of representatives should be changed so the same number of people are represented by each representative. That alone would alleviate most of the complaints of unequal representation. Being stuck with 435 representatives really skews the power distribution. Returning the Senate to selection by state legislature also solves the complaint of unequal representation in the senate. Representing the people isn't supposed to be the purpose of the senate.
However, for electing an executive, what is wrong with one vote per state? The states are selecting their international representative that Constitutionally has little power.
The mess we have was made incrementally over time. It doesn't make sense to give states one vote in presidential elections without fixing representation of the people and of the state governments. Fixing the house should be the first step so the people feel like they are being represented equally. Then fix the Senate so state governments have a voice. The maybe we address changes to the Electoral College.
The electoral college is designed (from the start) to prevent the larger, more populous states from dominating the country. Seems to be working as designed. And doing a good job as a system.
Politics is extremely broken, yes. But I don’t think the electoral college is the fault.
The states agreed to the Constitution with the Electoral College provision. If there's national will to change it, it should be through the amendment process described in the Constitution.
Having some states band together to subvert the intention of the EC fundamentally breaks the compact of the Constitution. What is the authority of a President chosen through subversion of the Constitution?
It’s not the electoral college (that’s its own problem). It’s the senate.
The senate gives 2 representatives to each state, irrespective of population. It’s essentially already government control by the smallest states - you have tiny states with 2 senators, when Washington DC has none - despite a larger population than a number of states.
PR, Guam, and American Samoa have no representation.
And the majority of those tiny population states are rural states that consider science to be secondary to whatever the Bible says.
That's not an argument against the Electoral College per se, but rather an argument against letting states allocate all of their Electoral College votes to the winner of the popular vote. This particular problem could be solved by forcing all states to apportion their Electoral College votes based on the distribution of the popular vote.
The Constitution of the United States is a document written to preserve co-equal sovereignty of a bunch of states that wanted to be closer to nations than provinces, while avoiding the then-very-apparent risk of centralized absolute governing authority.
The framers of the Constitution didn't get everything right, but it's very useful to keep that perspective in mind when trying to understand the form of the US government.
If you take the perspective of states as sovereign, with federation between them, then the Electoral College starts to make a lot more sense. The goal was to preserve the power of a state in the federal government, as much as to represent the collection of people from all states - both concepts were critical. The idea is that people from the nation deserve representation and that each state (and the people from that state as a sub-population) deserve representation.
If federation of states is a core concept of the subdivision of governing responsibility, then it makes sense to build a system that ensures each state has meaningful weight in the governance of that federation.
None of this is an argument for or against the Electoral College, nor should it be interpreted as arguing for the correctness/effectiveness/righteousness/morality of the institution. It is simply an attempt to share perspective to help understand why the system is the way it is.
As originally defined, the House of Representatives was the only piece of the federal government intended to directly represent the people of the nation. Senators were originally chosen by state legislatures. The Senate was intended to represent the states, not the people directly.
The Electoral College was an intermediary to represent both the states and the people - as a compromise, it has many failings that seem obvious today. There is no federal mandate as to how a state's electors choose to cast their votes. Each state is responsible for regulating its own voting - this includes how people vote and how electors are chosen and how those electors vote. It is mere happenstance that the majority of states have a winner-takes-all allotment strategy for their electors. Maine and Nebraska notably assign their electors proportionally.
It is also interesting to note that the tie-breaking mechanism for an Electoral College tie devolves to the House, not with one vote per representative, but with one vote per state. This is another example of the concept that states are a concept deserving of representation.
You need to consider how the US was originally intended to be organized, which is radically different than what is has become. States were envisioned as practically independent nations which would be tied together by an extremely minimal set of shared rules and obligations. The constitution doesn't really lay out many rules for states at all. What it does lay out is mostly just things preventing states from taking on national rules like entering into alliances, printing their own money, or declaring war.
The constitution focuses on laying out those minimal set of laws for the federal government. So it makes no sense for the constitution to tell states how they can or cannot vote. This was antithetical to the entire notion of what the United States was supposed to be. It was a state level matter. As an aside this is also part of the motivation for institutions like the electoral college - to ensure a strong separation between state internal affairs and their influence on the federal level, which could affect other states.
Your first two sentences are both accurate, but I don't think your third necessarily follows. There are strong arguments for getting rid of the Electoral College and they should be (and are being) debated.
reply