Does the US have a legitimate electoral system?

[muon2]

In many ways the US system borrowed from its experience with Parliament. The PM is not directly elected but is instead elected by a majority of MPs who function as electors. There was debate about direct presidential election, but the decision was to protect against a regional candidate who ran up the vote in only a few states. Hence a system of electors from each state. They aren't the members of Congress since they drafters didn't want the President to be indebted to Congress.

What has happened over the last 20 years is an unprecedented separation of the parties along urban and rural lines. Look at this map from the Chicago Tribune of the last 6 presidential elections in IL.



The drain of Dems from the rural counties into the Chicago metro area and vice verse for the Pubs is obvious. When Dems were spread throughout the rural US a swing in popular vote would swing enough EVs so that the PV and EV tracked each other for over 100 years until 2000. Now that the Dems are so highly concentrated it's much easier to swing a bunch of EVs without swinging the PV as much. That's what happened this year - large concentrations of Dems in CA and NY weren't matched by large numbers of Pubs in TX so those Dem concentrations didn't convert into EVs.

The apparent flaw in the system is an artifact of the particular appeal of the major parties as they exist today. History suggests that those parties will continue to shift their appeal and will again have more diverse geographic support as they did 20 years ago. Once that happens political scientists will no doubt write papers about this unique period for the US parties.