Should we abolish the popular vote?

[Gabu]

I personally agree with dazzleman and Winfield: the electoral college system is fine, but who the people vote for should be absolutely non-negotiable.  Personally, I don't even really see the point in having physical electors; given that we now have a national media system set up under which the majority of the results can be broadcast before the night is out, it seems to me that they aren't really needed anymore.

[Gabu]

The opposite should be done.
Get rid of the archaic system we have and go with the most votes win.

Yeah, but if we did that, only the major city's votes would count.  I would see that you might like that since the cities usually choose a more liberal candidate.  However, I don't think states like Delaware or South Dakota would really have any say.  The main problem is people in urban areas would have little problem getting other people to vote with them.  Rural voters would be less credited in the respect they wouldn't be able to encourage others to vote like they do being that they're less of a populated demographic.

Well, the one question I've always had is this: isn't this sort of how it happens already, at least in states that have at least one major city?  In a state like New York, where practically the entire state save for one little spot can be Republican, and it still goes Democratic, aren't rural voters still being pushed to the sidelines, in a way?  With a national popular vote, if 51% of a population of a state votes in one direction, the other 49% will still count towards the other guy's total instead of having their votes be entirely meaningless.

Plus, you only need to win 11 states in order to win the election, even with the electoral college.  The other 39 states could scream and yell and support the other guy by 90-point margins all they wanted, but it wouldn't make any difference whatsoever.  A national popular vote might make elections a truly national race, instead of simply focusing on a few "key states" while ignoring the rest of the population of America, since getting one more vote in, say, Alabama, would still help the Democrat, even if the state as a whole still supported the Republican.

I can only imagine, over time candidates would only run from cities and nobody would have any representation from the country.

As opposed to now, when New England is shunned with a vengeance and Democratic candidates from the South or the Midwest are the only ones who can likely win an election unless the opponent is really bad?

I should note that I'm not in favor of a national popular vote.  I do think that it has merit, however.

[Gabu]

The benefit of the electoral college is that the president-elect must seek out widespread support, and not just stack up large majorities in certain geographical segments of the country.

Sort of.  It can also mean that the person that a majority wanted may possibly lose.  While very far-fetched, the following is something that can theoretically mean a Democratic victory:



Democrat: 271 EVs, 28%
Republican: 268 EVs, 71%

At the moment, I can't think of a way to prevent both the possibility of a person winning with only a concentrated but super-strong base of support and the possibility of a person winning while the majority, or at least plurality, supported the other person.  I'm not even sure if one exists, although I may delve into the question further now that it's been raised, as I feel it's an interesting one.  It mainly depends, however, on which possibility you feel is the worst, with regards to which system you feel is better.  There's no universally "best" system.

The other issue is this: suppose there was some mass exodus of people in the direction of, say, California and Texas, resulting in the following map:



This is obviously even more lopsided and clustered, but this is still nevertheless a 270-268 Democratic win, even though there is hardly any broad support whatsoever.  Since the electoral college does take population into account, it does not always require broad support.  Even in the first example using the EV numbers as they were in 2004, broad support is not really attained.

The other issue with the electoral college is stuff like the following.  Here's the results from the 2004 election:



Shift only a few votes in one state and you get this:



Kerry still loses the popular vote by a considerable margin, but all of a sudden he's won the election.  If you don't like the variance in only one state, then give Kerry a 1.11% swing nation-wide - the same effect happens, in which Kerry loses the popular vote but wins the election.

The electoral college has the tendency to really exaggerate state results - winning by only one vote means that you get everything and that the loser gets nothing, even though support in the state is, in reality, about dead even.