USPOL
I wonder, for the people that want to get rid of the electoral college: Some states have marginalized voters because of a presumption of going for one party or the other. (NY, NJ, CA, MS, AL etc) Instead of eliminating the electoral college, why not get rid of "winner take all" in those states, and make candidates work for every one of those electoral votes? It could make those districts in the middle of the spectrum, even in otherwise decided states, worth fighting for.
USPOL
@murph That would be better I think. But you could still have an election where the candidate that wins the popular vote doesn't get the presidency.
USPOL
@Matter True, but my idea could be done without changing the U.S. constitution, and by reducing the granularity of the races, it would decrease the likelihood of that happening. (Working on jerrymandering, and reducing the possibility of faithless electors would help too)
USPOL
@murph you don't need to change the US constitution, there's this compact between states that would in practice make the vote be popular if enough states sign on
USPOL
@Matter Couldn't that also disenfranchise voters, making each state winner-take-all, but for the collective group of states? If your state joined on, and voted overwhelmingly opposite all the other states in the compact, those votes would again not count? I'm not sure that seems better, in my opinion.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_S…
Arguably it could make the vote even more skewed from the popular vote if say all "safe blue" states kept their FPtP and "safe red" states split their vote. That would make one side unfairly weakly represented.
Maybe that's why these states went with a compromise: each congressional district picks one elector and the state as a whole picks two.
As it happens, in practice Maine is mainly blue and Nebraska is mainly red and in the latest election they each threw one vote to the "other" side, so it evened out.
