Should we abolish the popular vote?

[muon2]

There's no reason why you can't preserve all the individual rights we have no while giving everyone at least approximately equal voting power.

The way the Senate is structured now, it doesn't denfend the rights of minorities against majorities.  It only protects some specified minorities, whle hurting other minorities.  What state you are from is really much less relevant tou our lives today than many other traits.  If you really want to protect minorities, give two Senators to each racial group, or each religion, or each income bracket.

The assumption in a federal body like the Senate is that significant minorites will not be so geographically uniform that they are lost in every jurisdiction. That assumption generally tends to be true, but the threshold for "significance" is ambiguous. That ambigous threshold is a good thing IMO, since it provides far greater flexibility to changing times than the specific declaration of minority interest groups.

[muon2]

There's no reason why you can't preserve all the individual rights we have no while giving everyone at least approximately equal voting power.

The way the Senate is structured now, it doesn't denfend the rights of minorities against majorities.  It only protects some specified minorities, whle hurting other minorities.  What state you are from is really much less relevant tou our lives today than many other traits.  If you really want to protect minorities, give two Senators to each racial group, or each religion, or each income bracket.

The assumption in a federal body like the Senate is that significant minorites will not be so geographically uniform that they are lost in every jurisdiction. That assumption generally tends to be true, but the threshold for "significance" is ambiguous. That ambigous threshold is a good thing IMO, since it provides far greater flexibility to changing times than the specific declaration of minority interest groups.

The problem with the Senate is that the founding fathers didn't creally ontemplate the idea that their might be interest groups that were totally undefined by geography.  For the most part, this is because these interests weren't even given voting rights at the time of the Constitution. 

One major "minority" that is completely geographically dispersed, for instance, is women.  People of all age groups are almost equally geographically dispersed.  And both rich and poor live in the same states and same cities, if not always in the same House district. 

If you want to really make sure the rights of minorities are represented, let them choose with "District" they want to be in....allow it to be completely free from geography.   Tell everyone they have to register to be in one of 100 "districts", but can choose which on they want.  Thus, people can identify with whatever interest they find most important. 

If enough people want to form an "Hispanic" district, or a "gay" district, or a "lawyer's" district, that's fine.  And if some people still value geography and want to form a "Maryland" district or a "Chicago" district, that's fine too.

In many ways you have described special interest lobbies. If enough people join one then the interest may have enough resources to affect political races. Smaller groups affect smaller races, larger groups affect larger races and more of them. By affecting races, they in turn have greater response to their agenda items.

One feature of the current system is that special interests line up in coalition primarily behind specific candidates. That gives the candidates greater independence from the party to meet the needs of the interests that support them for election. Those interests can be ideological or geographical. No special party is needed for each interest. The two major parties then represent broad groupings of candidates with generally overlapping interests.

[muon2]

What bothers me about election coverage, is the fascination with the popular vote totals and the nearly complete absence of any discussion of state totals.  Even on this site, the maps list the electoral counts and the popular vote totals, without listing the comparable state totals.

Per the constitution, the president is chosen by the states.  Not by the people.  States can decide how they want to make that choice, and currently all do so by having a popular preference contest.

The great compromise came about when the small states aquisced to the larger ones by giving them more power in the house of representatives and the presidential selection.  But they did not intend to be overwhelmed by that power, thus the senate and the electoral college.

The answer's a lot simpler than you think.

State totals are boring. We're not really interested in thinking up 51 PV totals.

Perhaps that's changing. I found CNN's primary coverage to be strikingly different from the past. As a state was counted, there were totals from the counties, AND the analysis took time to look at the margins by county.