EC supporters: Do you think any other place should have an "electoral college"?

[Del Tachi]

The 50 state governments and France (the two places mentioned by OP) are both examples of unitary governments, whereas an electoral college makes sense in a federal system.

In fact, very few democratic countries elect their chief executives directly.  The UK, Germany, Sweden, Japan, India all use parliamentary systems which, I would argue, is far more of an affront to democracy than the electoral college.

[Del Tachi]

The 50 state governments and France (the two places mentioned by OP) are both examples of unitary governments, whereas an electoral college makes sense in a federal system.

In fact, very few democratic countries elect their chief executives directly.  The UK, Germany, Sweden, Japan, India all use parliamentary systems which, I would argue, is far more of an affront to democracy than the electoral college.

Care to explain why you think that?

Voters do not directly vote for their chief executive.  They vote for an MP who then votes for a Prime Minister in parliament.  The electoral college is a more direct election process, and it at least allows voters to illustrate a preference for a split legislative/executive branch.

What is someone to do if they love their local MP but hate that party's leader/candidate for PM?  or vice-versa? 

[Del Tachi]

But this is a better argument for direct election, not an electoral college.

My point is that the United States is much like the rest of the world in that we do not directly elect a chief executive.  Its not like the electoral college makes our democracy suck compared to nations like the UK and Italy.

[Del Tachi]

To be fair, the UK system is an EC of sorts, just with a lot more districts, but it's still winner-take-all

the number of districts makes it MUUUUCH unlikelier that it could even be thinkabke that the candidate who gets more votes could lose an election, which is kind of stabbing democracy in the back.

And, on the whole, British election results are probably less representative of the electorate than American election results.  The Tories won 51% of the seats with only 37% of the vote.  John Q. Adams is the only American President to ever be elected with a lower percentage of the popular vote.

[Del Tachi]

Electoral College was a sordid compromise to solve a series of issues most of which no longer exist (and some no longer existed very quickly in the history of the United States) and were unique to Early America.

It's not a model you can export, even if you wanted to (and note that America when imposing democracy abroad a la Iraq plumbs for a parliamentary system).

America no longer has small, rural states?

(yes I'm aware of the current fad about claiming that the EC was about slavery, and I plain disagree)

No, the main issue was that there was no history of central government between the colonies and so had to share power to a degree between them - local identities being much more important than national ones.

It's a long time since anyone could reasonably claim that was true for most of the United States.

Disagree.  The idea of local representation is much more ingrained into the American psyche than it is in, say, Britain.  A large number of British MPs (especially leadership) are not even from their elected constituencies.  In the United States not only is it considered somewhat of a "scandal" when a member of Congress is found to have limited ties to his district but most Congresspeople see themselves as above all a representative of the interests of their districts more so than just vote-towing, partisan megaphones.