[sfj]

The whole reason there is a United States of America is because each state would get a voice in choosing the president. By only going by popularity, a few select cities decide all. If it was proposed that way, the USA would never have formed and we'd have a bunch of individual separate countries.

[moeadham]

“The only reason we have an application is because the original developers wrote it in COBOL. Refactoring it to the realities of the world today is blasphemy!”

[sfj]

What is so different? Are you sure the USA would hold together if they changed the voting structure so that NY and LA ran everything?

[krapp]

How would that be worse than a few key districts in one or two swing states running everything? Presidential candidates can afford to ignore entire sections of the country because they don't matter.

One could at least make the argument that the population centers should have more weight because that's where most of the people are, and those cities have the greatest financial and cultural influence. But why should, say, Iowa be as important as it seems to be in every Presidential election?

[disgruntledphd2]

Because otherwise only New York, Texas and California matter, which the framers of the Constitution decided was a bad idea.

I actually like the principle of the electoral college, it reminds me that the US is in fact, a Union of States.

The real issue I see are the rampant gerrymandering of the congressional districts, which have a far greater skewing effect on the results than the electoral college (well, technically the same because the congressional districts are identical to the electoral college).

[bosswipe]

The States are also gerrymandered, and we are stuck with it for ever. When states like Wyoming and the Dakatos were formed it was calculated based on the left/right debate of the day, slavery.

[knolax]

If the majority of people live in LA and NY, then that'd be reasonable, but that's not the case. If we got rid of the electoral college, rural voters would still be a substantial portion of the population. In the current system rural voters in California are being drowned out by coastal cities where as urban voters in inland states are being drowned out by rural districts.