Electoral system - what's wrong with it?

[Simon Feltser]

The main problem of our electoral system - the Electoral College. Yes, yes, everyone knows it. But nevertheless. Outrageous that a small group of individuals chooses the head of state, sometimes to the detriment and contrary to the opinion of the majority of citizens. Such a system doesn't work in any country of the world and considered by many political experts as archaism. According to sociological research company Gallup (Surveys - January 2013), 63% of Americans believe that the Electoral College should be abolished. We will have an important elections in the future. But with these the problems with the current electoral system we can get the result as in the elections in 2000, when he defeated a candidate who was not elected by the people

[Free Bird]

1. Excessive focus on swing states
2. Small chunks of some states influencing the whole thing because of winner take all population (PA, MI, VA are great examples).

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

1. Focus on swing states
2. Often makes election look like more of a landslide than it actually was
3. Faithless electors
4. Terrible tiebreaking system that encourages gerrymandering and has nothing to do with the presidential popular vote of any given state or the country as a whole.
5. Overrepresents small states and underrepresents medium and large states. (and no, this does not result in small states getting more attention during the election)
6. Ability to win by simply winning the 11 most populous states and not getting a single vote in any of the rest.

and probably the worst....

7. Ability to win with only 22% of the popular vote, by simply starting by winning 50.01% of the vote in Wyoming and continue to the next smallest state, then the next smallest, and so on until you have reached a victory in New Jersey, at which point you will be at 279-282 electoral votes (depending on ME and NE district performances).

Modifying the electoral college so that all states use the ME/NE system would make the system so bad that Romney would have won in 2012 without winning a single additional vote. Same goes for a system based on 'congressional district victories + who won the most districts in a given state'.

Modifying the electoral college to be a system of '2 votes for statewide winner, rest based on popular vote percentage for each candidate' (ex. 2012 CO under this would be a 6-3 obama split in EC) in each state would be a good option (2012 electoral count in this scenario: 282 Obama - 255 Romney - 1 Johnson), a strict national popular vote system might be even better.

Also, abolishing/modifying the college won't result in neglection of all but the most urban areas, the 100 most populous cities don't even account for a fifth of the entire U.S. population.