[gfiorav]

I see your point, and the Electoral College may need some updating (there’s also gerrymandering, which is problematic). However, I’d argue that the “popular vote” is not the best approach.

For huge countries where people’s lives are very varied, I think you need something to equate regions to others. The ancient Greeks tried direct democracy, and it didn’t work. The Founding Fathers knew this and called direct democracy “anarchy.” Not far off from the truth if you ask me, and the Greeks are a great cautionary tale on this.

Representative democracy, strongly coupled with local representation and a two-party system (yes, yes, I know) is where it’s at. The two-party system forces local reps to align with the bloc that most represents their interests ahead of the election. If you look at Europe, many citizens vote for a party only to see them make alliances and concessions with other minority parties that they wouldn’t have approved (e.g., Spain with independence parties).

Many things need updating, but I think it’s a mistake to forget history and assume that the U.S. political system was just randomly put together. There’s a lot of interesting history to dig into there (for example, the Federalist Papers).