[Thiez]

> There are some bigger problems: States have a winner-take-all system to magnify their impact in the election. This encourages politicians to spend all their time on a few key battleground states.

That sounds like a tragedy-of-the-commons type of situation.

Anyway, so it seems that your vote means more depending on which state you happen to live in. Suppose we wish to preserve that property, why not simply weigh all votes in each state by the number of representatives that that state would have today, add everything together, and on those numbers decide which candidate becomes president?

Edit: For example, we have states A and B. State A has 3 representatives and 100 inhabitants, and state B has 2 representatives and 50 inhabitants. We have candidates X and Y. In state A, X receives 60 votes, and Y receives 40 votes. In state B, X receives 20 votes, and Y receives 30 votes. Now we calculate the winner:

X receives (3 * 60) + (2 * 20) = 220 "votes"

Y receives (3 * 40) + (2 * 30) = 200 "votes"

X wins.

[MichaelBurge]

One reason I'd oppose that is because you're making the federal government choose how each state votes. You can already go to a small state and campaign for changes to the voting method. Moving it to the federal level takes that power away from your local community or state. If you forced every state to vote the same way, I predict that method would never be touched by any politician ever again.

As an example, Maine just passed Ranked Voting, as did Benton County, Oregon. That kind of incremental change would be impossible if you moved it up to the federal level.

http://www.fairvote.org/maine_voters_adopt_ranked_choice_vot...

[Thiez]

I see your point, but the current system encourages states to use a winner-takes-all system because it maximizes the influence of that state, which is hardly ideal. It'd be a shame to pass up on a good system (or one that is better than the one you are using now, in my opinion) just so you can forever experiment around with individual states. "Perfect" is the enemy of "good" and all that.

[taejo]

You can also prevent the tragedy of the commons, without federal interference, through an inter-state compact (basically a treaty/contract between states).