The Electoral College
Under the Electoral College system a minority of the votes cast may be enough to elect a President. Set aside, for a moment, all argument about confusing ballots, hanging chads, and systematic disenfranchisement: Al Gore got 51,003,894 votes and Bush got 50,459,211 votes and was elected President.
The Electoral College system "systematically" disenfranchises voters in each state, whose ballots never count toward the election of the candidate of their choice. You did realize this, didn’t you? But of course.
Voting for Electors (the guys you are actually voting for when you’re hanging chads or misreading your ballot) is a winner-take-all proposition. If your party or persuasion is in a minority in your state your vote will never influence the outcome. The other guys win and your state’s electoral votes goes to their candidate.
So why not abolish the Electoral College, something no fair-minded person should object to? The answer is that we are not dealing with fair-minded persons, we are dealing with the leadership of political parties at the state and national level.
Each state is allotted as many electoral votes as it has Congressmen and Senators. In states with small populations, currently many of the "red" or Republican states, the fact that regardless of population those states get two "senatorial" votes gives their voters a disproportionate edge. For Alaska it only takes 94,000 votes to get an electoral vote. In California it takes 210,000 votes to get an electoral vote.
In looking at electoral votes per state, and voting patterns, it appears that states with 8 electoral votes or less are benefited by this system because the two extra (for Senators) weigh more heavily on a small population. States with more than 8 electoral votes get screwed. We count 28 states with 8 electoral votes or less. So counting DC as a state the vote against a pure popular vote would be 28 to 23. Nowhere near the 38 votes needed.
Please note, in a popular vote if you have 20 parties someone could win the popular vote with a little over 5 percent of the vote so that is not a sure cure unless you assume the continuance of the two party system. If we went to a popular vote we would hope it would have a runoff provision so one of the top two vote getters would have to get over 50 percent.
Conclusion:
However much we want it, we’ll never get rid of the Electoral College.This arrangement especially benefits the small population "red" states, most of which vote Republican.
