joel's pub

college drop-outs...
is there any insitution less democratic and more outdated than the electoral college? just ask al gore and those guys who ran against rutherford b. hayes and (i think) william harrison who both won the electoral college despite losing the popular vote. sound familiar?
anyway, my problem with it is that it basically invalidates your vote if you're a, say, democrat in south carolina or a republican in maryland.
and it doesn't really force politicians to campaign in rural areas, either. instead it focuses campaigning on a few select battleground states (think florida).
wouldn't a better system be to either use a winner-take-all system in each congressional district (basically localizing the E.C.) or use a simple popular vote or use a nifty new formula such as a ranking by preference (where each voters ranks the candidates in order of preference and points are awarded based on how high a person ranks on each voter's ballot.
here and here are some links to various arguments relating to abolishing the E.C.


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