[scoofy]

The problem with a popular-vote systems is that we have a decentralized system of elections. Most people don't take seriously that many states would be incentivizes to cheat or at least look the other way to boost the number of votes coming from their state.

It's not election changing if one state, lets say accidentally, allows people to vote twice. It could effect their local outcomes, but if everyone votes twice, it should net itself. However, a fair election of the president would be completely fucked.

[yongjik]

It's the other way. Under EC the election is often decided by a single state with tiny margin, and because America does not have the good sense to use a national standard voting system, it falls to the eccentricity of the particular state (and its counties) doing whatever they think is adequate. Look up the "hanging chad" controversy of 2000 - paper punching machines might have not worked properly for a few hundred votes and it potentially decided the outcome of the nation.

Under popular vote, even the minimal vote margins are quite large because it's aggregated at the national scale - e.g., Kennedy defeated Nixon in 1960 with only 0.17% difference in popular vote, which was still 113K votes.

To sway that election, you would've had to organize across multiple states to find a way to smuggle 113K votes illegally, while not getting any suspicions from poll workers and people tabulating results. And non of your co-conspirators should ever divulge it. It's so ridiculous that it approaches "9/11 was an insider job" territory.

[maxerickson]

We already have a similar problem to what you describe.

You propose a weakness in our election system where a conspiracy of state officials that wants to influence an election can control who is allowed to vote twice. If they can do this, they can already influence the outcome in their state.

Of course we see no such thing, because the elections are only administered at a state level, they are actually done at a local level, and there's quite a lot of observation and auditing that goes into verifying that things are done correctly.