Monarchys worked for centuries, also. One could actually make the argument that it hasn't worked for centuries if you look at elections in the early 1800's. Of the 5 times a president has won the electoral and lost the popular, 2 have happened this century and there's still a touch under 80% of it to go. The reason for this is that sophisticated modeling and targeting, unavailable in the 1780's, allows campaigns to target activities to secure electoral votes instead of wooing the majority of the population. This feeds a cyclic "my vote doesn't matter" effect which discourages all but hard-core political folks to vote.

The very nature of the constitution allows for it to be changed if a better idea comes along. Electors are a bad idea in this day and age and we have a better one.

@1of5

Democracy is a very modern idea, not ancient like monarchies and not archaic.

There is a big argument against popular vote that progressives want it because they have all populous states and it will disfranchise voters in other smaller states.

The electoral college idea was developed with many things in mind and it was very deliberate. They could choose popular vote but they did not. I bet we would not talk about changing anything if we were winning.

We should get better at many things to win instead like the following but why do we not talk about it?

1. Change old, worn out in-Washington-forever lousy leaders like Pelosi, Hoyer, Bernie Sanders, Cardin, Feinstein. Leahy is 81 years old
2. Washing old leaders do not hit campaign trails, they leave the work to volunteers and fund raisers and won't ever go in the South to help Democratic candidates
3. Put terms limits on Congressional leaders and bring in new young leaders
4. Stop their premium healthcare that common Americans do not receive
5. Make all political donations public by candidate and PACs within 30 days
6. Tighten ethics law and rules on nepotism, lobbying, campaign finance and an automatic special prosecutor appointment after sufficient evidence is submitted to the Inspector General

Why are we not not focusing on failed leadership of our leaders? That will solve a lot of problems.

@St-Sinner Very modern idea? Are the Greeks aware of this? Our system is more designed to look like a democracy than function like one.

If you haven't noticed, we did win and I'd still like to change it.

The founders did not believe information could flow fast enough on a nationwide basis to have an informed electorate for a proper presidential election, and also administrating/overseeing that election would have been a nightmare. At the time of writing, horse back and smoke signals was the speed of information. This, of course, is no longer true. Unfortunatly speed of information does not ensure informed voters, but whathcha gonna do? Anyways, thats one of the main reasons we have the electoral college, they didn't trust that people could actually make an informed choice with a lack of information, so they decided that electors would be tasked with that burden.

As originally conceived the house of representatives was to be the people of the states "voice" in the federal government and originally was responsible for selecting the states senators as well as being given final say on an election that didn't produce a majority of electoral votes - something that was anticipated to happen more frequently as a 2 party system was actually dreaded - but I digress, the point i was making is that we now elect senators by popular vote so how an entire branch of government is now elected has already been changed, presumably for the better.

Pretty much everything you list could be changed with higher voter turnout, but because people don't think thier vote matters they don't. So we get the same corrupt shit time after time with the vast majority of people complaining about getting the same corrupt shit time after time.

If we want a true representative democracy we need true proportional party representation instead of our current winner take all scenario. Oh, and publicly funded campaigns. Almost forgot that one.

There's some legal challenges that'll happen if the NPVIC ever passes in enough states and I shudder to think what hash this SC would come up with. They'd probably be happy letting the house of reps decide, which IMO is an "originallist" reading of the process laid out by the founders.

@1of5 I guess there is also the issue of will all the States actually do it, or will some despotic autocrat like Trump coerce a governor to bail, illegally, and then the whole thing goes to SCOTUS. Maybe that's what you meant. And if the whole thing swings on SCOTUS ruling the first time it happens then it's a risk. It seems unlikely though if the normal EV counting would give it to the unpopular choice its not a big risk if the NPVIC tries to throw it the other way, and then fails - a case of nothing ventured nothing gained. We do probably need to kill off a few Trump stooges first, or unrig SCOTUS the legal way.

@prometheus it'll be a damn near automatic voter disenfranchisement case when a state that would have sent delegates for candidate X has to send them for candidate Y because of how the voting went in states A, B, and C. It'll be at the SC in no time, unfortunately.

@1of5 but how is that any more disenfranchising than when State's electors throw all their votes for the popular vote? As best I can tell there's nothing in the Constitution that says they have to vote in any way, and if the State has a law one way or the other that rules - including replacing and fining unfaithful electors which was recently upheld by SCOTUS.

@prometheus
Full disclaimer, due to covid I watch MNF over the phone with a buddy 1500 miles away. Alcohol and ( totally legal in my state of residence) drugs may or may not be involved.

Because that's the way it is in the constitution, so its constitutional. Sucks. Wish it were more nuanced and shit, but thats the reality of it. And also, why it needs to be changed. The constitution isn't some holy document from "the wisest that ever lived", its a framework that was created by intelligent men as a changeable system to build upon (its important to remember that the framers of the constitution were riding a wave of social/political change that had previously stagnated Europe for hundreds upon hundreds of years) and that change was part of thier design, recognizing that change was inevitable from then into the future.

The constitution gives states control over elections so the feds don't have to. If memory serves one of the only requirements in the constitution for elections is the frequency and timing of federal elections. The states, in the interest of efficiency, combine elections of state and federal issues together.

Or not. I'm pretty buzzed ATM.

Hadn't thought about that aspect. Although I think California is already about as red as it will get in terms of percentage - so many of the Republican voters are already clustered in rural or non-big city precincts that are already majority red.

Surely this would also change the chances of third party candidates? I'd like to see libertarians joining democrats in getting States to mandate ranked choice voting as this is their real path to representation. I don't fear they would ever get a majority, but it would nicely peel off voters who normally vote R. For sure we would probably have other third parties peeling off voters from the D. But combined with ranked choice it ultimately wouldn't matter much. IMO.

The Electoral College is a mess and an embarrassment.

Completely agreed. I like to think of that scene from The Matrix where Neo is asked "You think that's air you're breathing?" and replace it with "You think this is democracy you're experiencing?"