Well yes it is.
It is smart to keep power from concentrating in the big states and cites and help hold the country together long term.
Funny how smart those guys 2 centuries ago were.

Liberals do have a particular disdain for the people who live in `flyover country`. Perhaps we should ban that phrase as it could be considered a racial slur to those who reside in America`s heartland. Liberals are all about banning stuff so they shouldn`t have a problem with it.

Right Hillary? Right John Kerry?

Keep the Electoral College and drop the 17th Amendment

The EC limits a given fraud. It is an imperfect method but has worked rather well.

With an EC no matter how much fraud there is in, say Philadelphia, it can only steal the EC votes of Pennsylvania. It cannot steal the EC votes of Indiana.

To get the EC votes of Indiana would require a second successful fraud carried out by different people.

Granted stealing one state may occasionally be enough. But it will depend upon what the other states do.

If we change to a national popular vote then any fraud anywhere affects everything. The biggest liar wins, period.

The Founders were brilliant and they knew about fallen civilizations in history. If the elected idiots would actually read the Constitution before they swear to uphold and defend it against all enemies foreign and domestic, we would not be in this mess.

Of course the only candidate that kept his oath to protect the Constitution (99% voting record) was Ron Paul and the right wingnuts wouldn't know a true statesman when they see one.

The electoral college is an archaic way to count votes. I live in NYS and my vote does not count. I have relatives in California and their votes do not count. Because they are overwhelmed my votes for the opponent party.
Is that democracy? If a person lives in a state that is overwhelmingly for the other party'e nominee, your vote is useless and you may as well stay home. No Republican will win to an elected office where I live, at any level. But if my vote counted as ONE, and everyone's vote counted as ONE vote, then each and every person's vote would count equally. We are in fact disenfranchised. there is nothing difficult to understand about that fact.

I suppose we're losing sight of the fact that each state is sovereign, and they determine how the country should be run.

That was clearly the case before Senators were elected by direct election.

Granted, the people were given some voice in the House, but the Senate and President were to be determined by the States.

A good system for the most part.

On a pure math level, the pop-vote would seem more 'fair'. However, as we see every day, the city folk and the country folk live in different universes. The country folk FEED the city folk but they are few and far between. The EC is an attempt to deal with this problem. This structure is similar to the compromise built into the congress where we all get only two senators but we get a proportional number of reps in the house.

Genius, really.

By all means, abolish the EC...if you want the Obamaphone Lady and the various and sundry tax-sponge parasite groups picking every president from here on in. We're getting there soon enough as it is.

#6 misses the point of the Electoral College. You see, we as individual don't vote for the President and never have. The individual states vote for the President and it's winner take all. This is a state's rights issue. If there was no Electoral College and each citizen's vote were counted separately, all but the most populace states would lose their sovereignty and their representation. BTW, this is not a democracy; it's a representative republic.


Girl's Hubby

The Federal gov't is a construction of the states. It is the created and hired agent of the states. The EC, codifying voting state-by-state [you do know that each state's EC count is the total of its House and Senate representation, don't you? It's gotten pointless to say "Congress" because morons have made it a synonym for the House; it is not], is thus the natural mechanism -- not an afterthought.

#10 seems to comes close to getting it right. Thanks.

#7: Good post. And yes, direct election of Senators isn't a good idea. State gov't would [eventually] be more carefully monitored by the citizens without direct election of Senators. And with tighter requirements on earning the voting privilege.

Of course it is brilliant. That's why so many just don't get it, or more properly, are stymied by it. Without it we got mob rule.

The only change I could see that might make the EC more representative would be to have each state split their EC votes based on its statewide percentages. It would probably result in a larger conservative turnout in the dark blue states where they are presently overwhealmed. I wouldn't expect to see a pickup of liberals in in the deep red states, since they already bus their people in.

Otherwise, I believe that we've got it as good as it gets, thanks to the wisdom of our Founding Fathers. They were truely brilliantly inspired - absolutly amazing when you reflect about them.

#10 you beat me to it. #6 does not understand the Electoral College. Actually with a majority vote New York City, Chicago, San Fran, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Atlanta etc...would elect a President for all the Podunk towns in the US of A.

Thank you #10.

I recommend that #6 actually take the time read what the Founding Fathers had to say about the Electoral College before mouthing off about it. I have no patience for people who think that 1) this country was set up as a 'democracy.' Our Founding Fathers had SCATHING things to say about "democracy." and 2) think that one man = one vote = fairness for all will be a pure and incorruptible method. I can only take so much naivety before *I* think that the person trashing the EC needs a good thwack upside the head and made to recite the Preamble until theyre dizzy...

To give up the electoral college is to hand the USA to New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles....think about that a moment