The Electoral College has worked in the past, but there are those who when they lose want to claim "shenanigins" on everything and say the system is broke.
It does seem odd that a candidate can lose the vote count but win by Electoral College.
How about simply going by tally of voters votes cast? Get the majority of votes in any given state = win that state. Too simple?
ROX
ROX,
I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean. It seems to me that you're proposing exactly what happens now: whoever wins the state gets the electoral college votes from the state, and the electoral college votes are directly proportional to the state's population.
The whole idea of the electoral college was to make the selection of the president more politically reliable. What many people forget is that the founders were all "Classically Educated," with a curriculum that was heavy on ancient history, literature, and languages. For a group of guys trying to set up a democracy after centuries of autocracy, the Peloponnesian War provided a HUGE caution. In that war, Athens snatched defeat from the jaws of victory when the masses voted for an invasion of Sicily. Militarily it was insane, but the masses voted for it because they would make out like bandits from the war effort itself. (Most of the city based commoners could work as rowers in wartime, making steady income even when other work dried up.)
With this example, the founders thought it was foolish to trust uneducated commoners with the levers of power. Instead, the commoners voted for the Electors, who would get together at the club and decide who'd get to be president.
In fact there's nothing in the constitution that says electors HAVE to vote a certain way. Only tradition and party loyalty bind them to vote for a specific candidate, and in fact there has been at least one instance when Electors voted against the guy they were supposed to support.
