This institution is alleged by some to be quaint and archaic.
Which it clearly is; although that alone doesn't make it good or bad
Which could be argued to be a plus if it were actually true (although there's always the obvious counter-arguement that one vote should not count more than another vote)... which it isn't. It might have been in the 18th century when America was a largely agricultural society with relatively small urban centres which really could be outvoted by rural areas in some states (if politics had ever divided on urban/rural lines). But that just isn't the case now; an overwhelming majority of the population lives in "urban" areas and Presidential elections are now won or lost in various metropolitan areas in various key states:
As appealing as the decidedly romantic idea that the electoral college prevents urban metropolitan areas from deciding who becomes President no matter what rural areas think is, it's a redundent arguement as urban metropolitan areas already
do dominate the political process. All the electoral college does is decide which fortunate metropolitan areas get to wield the most power.
Any electoral system in a country as huge and diverse as the United States would encourage that; in pure PV system Kerry couldn't have just sat back and pump out as many votes as he could from Boston or New York and hope to win; neither could Bush have done the same with Houston or Dallas.
But as the Electoral Votes of each state are determined by the PV in each state, this can happen with the Electoral College as well:
Despite Carter's strong support in most of rural Arkansas, Reagan's even stronger support in the more urbanized Northwest enabled him to take the state by just over 5000 votes... and take all 6 of Arkansas' votes in the Electoral College.
Really?
Which is perhaps the best arguement in favour of the current Electoral College system
Which is, at best, a technical distinction nowadays. Certainly the U.S is run on federal lines (and there's nothing wrong with this) but this doesn't mean it can't be or shouldn't be democratic (or, in this case, more democratic).
Not necessarily
At it's most extreme, no. No it doesn't.
While I can see a case for some form of Electoral College, I can't really think of a good reason to just leave the system as it is (I don't consider tradition to be a good reason on it's own), if part of the idea is to make sure that the voices of different areas (rural, urban or whatever) are heard equally in the selection of a new President, wouldn't it make more sense to adopt a setup similer to what is used in Maine and Nebraska?
