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Your lack of understanding of the function of the Electoral College is profound.

Using just a raw, direct election means that the biggest population centers get to dictate who the POTUS is. In modern America, that means that the coastal, liberal, urban voters would get their marxist choice every time and the other 47 or so states would mean nothing.

Without going into specific detail, the Electoral College makes it possible for the minority populations of the “flyover” states to have at least a shot at having a say in the outcome, meaning that the POTUS is chosen by a consensus of as many states as possible and not just the most heavily populated urban areas.

This brilliant concept is EXTREMELY important to the health of the Republic and is why George Soros and all other marxists want the Electoral College to disappear so that the marxist urban centers can always choose the POTUS based simply on raw population size and desire to redistribute wealth to those population centers.

Using just a raw, direct election means that the biggest population centers get to dictate who the POTUS is.

That's how it works anyway. Haven't you seen the county by county maps? In each state, the majority of the votes of that state come from the heavily populated urban centers. Hence, the electoral votes of each state are weighted in favor of the urban centers.

the Electoral College makes it possible for the minority populations of the “flyover” states to have at least a shot at having a say in the outcome, meaning that the POTUS is chosen by a consensus of as many states as possible and not just the most heavily populated urban areas.

Rubbish. How are electoral votes determined? By population. Hence California has 55 electoral votes, and Montana has 3. How is that any extra advantage to Montana? It isn't. It's six in one, half-dozen the other.

This brilliant concept is EXTREMELY important to the health of the Republic

No, it's actually pretty meaningless.

Under the Electoral College system it is theoretically possible for a president to be elected by somewhere around 25% of the vote, with about 75% of the vote going to his losing opponent.

All you need is 51% in each of the states that make up a bare majority in the EC, and near 100% in each of the remainder for the opponent.

Won’t ever happen, of course. However, since most Americans believe the president’s legitimate authority derives from popular approval, not obscure 18th century political compromises, it seems reasonable to me that considering an amendment to modify the selection proces is not unreasonable.

That also won’t happen, of course, as it requires the states and interests that get disproportionate influence from the EC to acquiesce in their own disempowerment.

Personally, the amendment I am most in favor of would make amending the Constitution easier to accomplish. Then perhaps we could get back to running our government on a truly constitutional basis rather than the present euphemisms and pretenses.

>>>Using just a raw, direct election means that the biggest population centers get to dictate who the POTUS is. In modern America, that means that the coastal, liberal, urban voters would get their marxist choice every time and the other 47 or so states would mean nothing.<<<

While I support the Electoral College system, what you wrote is simply not true. There have only been 3 elections where the winner of the popular vote did not also win the EC vote. The population of the rest of the country is sufficient to compete with and ofter overcome the population of the large cities.

In 2000 Bush won despite losing the popular vote by a large margin. However, in 2004 Kerry could have taken the EV, with 100K more votes in Ohio, despite losing the popular vote by about 3 million. The point is the EC sometimes helps the GOP and sometimes hurts it.

IMHO, the best thing about the EC today is that it serves to blunt the effect of voter fraud. For example, in a popular vote system, if Liberals in New York or Califorina (or even just in NYC and LA) committed massive voter fraud, stealing millions of votes for the Democrats, that fraud alone could steal the national election. The EC would limit the fraudsters to stealing the EVs of those states (and it is likely that a state where one party had the power to commit such a massive fraud would probably be won by that party in a honest election anyway).

Perhaps the worst thing about it, is that it creates solid “red” and “blue” states that largely get taken for granted and ignored in Presidential elections and swing states that get too much attention (and perhaps too much influence).

The current system of electing the president ensures that the candidates, after the primaries, do not reach out to all of the states and their voters. Candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or care about the voter concerns in the dozens of states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind. The reason for this is the state-by-state winner-take-all method (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but since enacted by 48 states), under which all of a state’s electoral votes are awarded to the candidate who gets the most votes in each separate state.

Presidential candidates concentrate their attention on only a handful of closely divided “battleground” states and their voters. In the 2012 election, pundits and campaign operatives agree already, that only 14 states and their voters will matter. Almost 75% of the country will be ignored —including 19 of the 22 lowest population and medium-small states, and big states like California, Georgia, New York, and Texas. This will be more obscene than the already outrageous facts that in 2008,, candidates concentrated over 2/3rds of their campaign events and ad money in just 6 states, and 98% in just 15 states (CO, FL, IN, IA, MI, MN, MO, NV, NH, NM, NC, OH, PA, VA, and WI). Over half (57%) of the events were in just 4 states (Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Virginia). In 2004, candidates concentrated over 2/3rds of their money and campaign visits in 5 states; over 80% in 9 states; and over 99% of their money in 16 states.

2/3rds of the states and people have been merely spectators to the presidential elections.

Policies important to the citizens of ‘flyover’ states are not as highly prioritized as policies important to ‘battleground’ states when it comes to governing.