[Junk Silver]

“Americans would prefer by overwhelming majorities to elect a president using a popular vote system”

IDIOTS!

Of course the overwhelming majority (found in a few big cities) would like absolute power.

That’s exactly why the Electoral College was created.

I give it two years until the NY Times is on-line only, with a part-time staff of 20 people or so.

[Principled]

Yeah good luck with that amendment. Get all those states between ny and California to give up their power.

That’s going to happen.

Said nobody ever.

[noiseman]

A good way to explain the electoral college is to say that in order to be "fair" (one of the left's favorite words), each state gets to decide who they want to be president. A popular vote is taken within the state, and any votes above and beyond those necessary to reach a majority choice in that state are irrelevant to the eventual outcome in that state. The "popular vote" matters, but only within the boundaries of each state and only up to the point where that state counts its votes and determines who that state is supporting for president.

Since liberals love the UN so much, it might be profitable to ask them why each country only gets one vote in the General Assembly, regardless of its population. Pitting two of their contradictory beliefs against one another is always good for creating a mental short circuit.

[freeandfreezing]

“Americans would prefer by overwhelming majorities to elect a president using a popular vote system”

Not once they think about it. One of the many advantages of the state based electoral college system is that it isolates vote counting issues to a particular state. So you can have a recount in one state, or a dispute about what happened in one state. But as soon as you have a nationwide popular vote election a recount means you have to recount the entire country.