[yamtaddle]

> And for everyone who is crying about the popular vote, there is a very good reason we don't do that. It was recognized from the start that if you do a strict popular vote. the more populous and wealthy areas would always call the shots and would dictate politics to the rest of the nation. At the time that meant Virginia. But it doesn't really matter who, the principle still holds. This was a compromise between populous areas and rural areas in order to get the union formed.

The original intention was not this bloc-voting crap. The idea was that a state would select some trusted, wise, and ideally educated, locals to go get a look at the candidates and vote on their behalf, since expecting everyone in a whole country the size of the US to get any meaningful sense of the candidates, or to understand many of the relevant issues in order to make an informed choice, was obviously crazy in a time before broadcast (and still is, actually; broadcast barely even helped with the core problem of most folks—justifiably!—knowing almost nothing about the things a head of state deals with).

This broke down instantly, as electors began pre-declaring for candidates. But we kept the system, which, while a half-decent (if hopelessly poorly-implemented) idea originally, is now simply very bad—we get all the noisy, absurd national campaigning but most of us don't get a meaningful say in the election, anyway.