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Our forefathers were brilliant to put the electoral college in place. Without it, Philadelphia, NYC, Chicago, LA would choosing the President.

And maybe even LA wouldn't count. Elections would be over by the time the polls closed east of the Mississippi.

Just as the World Series is broken up into five of seven *games* that must be won-- the effect of the EC is to force a particular strategy on the players. It is quite possible that one team could get more runs in a series, and yet lose the series. But we want them to build their strategy around winning games.

It is a complete myth to even suggest that there is such a thing as a "popular vote" that can be counted. It cannot. Nobody actually knows those numbers for sure. There are (supposedly) states where ballots will remain uncounted if the total remaining cannot possibly change the outcome.

But more important than that: campaign strategy is wholly built around the EC model, and campaigning does affect the voting patterns. To compare a so-called "popular vote" count without recognizing that the campaign strategy was designed around key battleground states is to ignore the gorilla in the room.

The EC system is not the problem...the problem is the "winner take all" rules that most states use (and it is THEIR descision as to how to allocate their EC's).

An alternate system has been proposed before, and it is quite good.

Instead of the candidate who recieves 51% of a state's popular vote taking ALL of its EC's, they would be allocated by congressional district. The candidate winning the majority in a DISTRICT gets that DISTRICT's EC. There are 435 total.

THEN, the candidate getting the majority of the popular vote in the STATE gets two extra EC's...those representing its Senators. The state of Maine uses this system currently, as does one other state which escapes me. Thus, the 535 total EC's available.

With this system, California's 54- EV bonanza would NOT all go to one candidate. It would instead be divided, and those people in Congressional districts favoring Republicans would see their EC's go to their candidate, instead of watching them be "given" to a Democrat.

Were this system in place nationawide in 2000, the President would have won in a landslide. It would also, IMHO, be a better way to represent the people's wishes.