I've spoken to some political scientists about the Electoral College and other places where you might want to reform the electoral system. Suffice to say that it's a Pandora's Box. Once you open the discussion to reforming one part of the system, everything is suddenly on the table. If you feel, for example, that the Electoral College gives disproportionate weight to some states, then you're effectively saying the same thing about the Senate. Any argument you make against one applies to the other. In effect, you're tugging at the glue that (barely) holds things together in Washington. For example, if you want to go after the morass of redistricting, then you're going after the heart of what a Congressional district is, in the first place. Why stop at, say, "compact districts" when you could go after some sort of K of N scheme where you have larger districts, allowing minorities to focus their votes behind their favorite niche candidates yet preserving a majority's control over the government? You're really dancing around the fundamental question of what "representation" is all about. Is it about having a rep whose small district includes you, even if you disagree with your rep, or is it about having much larger and more vacuous districts, where you might have somebody with whom you more closely agree? One of the big arguments in favor of this sort of reform is that it makes third-party candidates viable. It's largely unclear how that would all pan out. Would we have coalition governments as occurs in many countries with a Parliamentary system? Do we want minority, single-issue parties, to serve the purpose of king-makers? "We'll join you to form a government under the condition that you support our abhorent position."

Much as I'd love to see these kinds of questions being seriously discussed in Washington, I doubt they'll go anywhere. And, if they do, they might not go somewhere that we like, because the people in power (notably Tom DeLay), have already demonstrated their willingness to push major changes for a strictly partisan benefit. If we'd had a scenario where Bush won the popular vote but Kerry won the Electoral College, then you'd have pissed off activists in both parties willing to discuss major reform. Given that the Republicans won in every way (modulo allegations of fraudulent activity), they're quite likely to be happy with things as they are.

Earlier in this thread, somebody was saying that, if the President were elected strictly based on popular vote, that the campaigning would turn to population centers away from rural areas. This is only partly true. In Florida, Kerry won most of the population centers, but Bush won the state based on his rural and suburban appeal. I don't know nationwide statistics, but there are enough suburban and rural people that a candidate would ignore them at his or her peril.

I can think of one good reason to keep the Electoral College around. It gives you someplace to focus your attention if things go wrong. Imagine, in a nationwide popular vote without the Electoral College, Candidate A beat Candidate B by a mere 500 votes. Suddenly, every damn precinct in the country would start doing recounts to see if they could bolster their candidate. It would be chaos. A similar effect could happen if, in every state, the electoral votes were split as they are in Nebraska, Maine, or in the falled Colorado initiative.

It's the devil you know verus the devil you don't.