Direct election of the President would eliminate Republican-favoured bias.

[patriotvoice]

"Why not just elect the president by popular vote? The reason this system has never changed is simple: politics. States with many buffalo and few people, like Wyoming, benefit from it and are not keen on changing it. Since every state gets at least three electors, low-population states have proportionally far more political power than they would have in a direct election system. The number of voters per elector is about four times smaller in the three-elector states than in the most-populous states, as shown in this table. The fact that nearly all the low-population states are heavily Republican adds to the difficulties of changing the system. Direct election of the president would eliminate the current bias in favor of the Republicans."

http://www.electoral-vote.com/info/electoral-college.html

No shit.

[GainesT1958]

1. I've felt that way ever since eighth grade...

And, needless to say, the 2000 Selection has only strengthened my resolve for that belief!:D

B-)

[Melodybe]

2. I agree a popular vote would make many repubs loose their jobs

:cry:

[salib]

3. We need IRV and direct elections

http://www.fairvote.org/irv/

[GreenPartyVoter]

5. If not IRV, than some other preference voting method, plus

the other suggestions on my site.

I am partial to condorcet or modified borda/cumulative. I like the idea of ranking candidates and assigning the rankings a value. That way to get the benefits of both ranked voting and approval voting all in one fell swoop.

[kiahzero]

6. No No No NO!

IRV is BAD. Worse than plurality voting. Gives the illusion of creating a multi-party democracy; if a third party were ever to be equal in strength to the main two, the system would be chaotic.

Condorcet is the superior system - it actually takes into account the entirety of voter preference, it doesn't have strategic voting issues, and it is one of the best systems for picking the Ideal Democratic Winner (the person that results in the highest 'happiness' in the population).

For more information, go to:
http://www.bolson.org/voting/
http://www.electionmethods.org

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. That's so true that in Oregon, some of the Republicanites

were proposing that the governor be elected by giving each county a certain number of electoral votes. Since most of the counties have more cattle or trees than people, this would definitely help them.

Them guldarn Democrats predominate in the counties that actually have people.

[Bill McBlueState]

7. i like the table at the link

Another argument that appeared in McPaper a couple weeks ago in favor of the electoral college was that following: Elections in cities are prone to corruption, so we should support the winner-take-all electoral college system because it marginalizes the largest cities.

(e.g. New York is considered a safe state for Kerry, so it doesn't matter if there are irregularities in NYC since Kerry will win anyway.)

And there's the argument that the current system forces the candidates to visit small states instead of just the population centers. But... if it's a population center isn't it completely reasonable that candidates would spend lots of time there?

We all know here that the electoral college system makes some votes worth more than others. The extent to which one is bothered by that indisputable fact is the extent to which one will be dissatisfied with the present system.

[leyton]

8. delete

delete

[leyton]

9. I think they should just take away 2 EV's from each state.

So that the college would reflect the House of Representatives, not the entire Congress. This is more proportional (if still a bit uneven) than the current system.

The reason I propose this is because if it is simply a direct election, then it becomes not a race to the middle but just a race for each candidate to turn out his base in high numbers. The Republicans move to the right, trying to motivate the Religious Right, while the Democrats move to the left, trying to motivate solid Democrats. I'd rather not see George Bush doing everything he can to motivate the radical right - as it stands, their influence has a ceiling because there are only so many EV's in the South.

By this token, the 2000 outcome would have been Gore 226, Bush 211: more reflective of the popular vote.