What if we just took an eraser to the electoral college thing?
Terrible Idea, unless you want all our presidents to be elected in New York City and Los Angeles.
That's just poor logic. The electoral college assigns votes based upon population, so New York and Los Angeles are accounted for. The real problem with the system is that if a candidate were to win a state by just one vote, he/she would still get all the votes from the electoral college as if he/she won the state by unanimous decision. The system should be done away with.
First of all, novice, New York CITY and the CITY of Los Angeles don't have electoral college representation...their states do. There are rural people in those states as well (shocking, I know). If we did away with the electoral college, Politicians could select a few, highly populated locations and campaign exclusively in those locations. Politicians are forced to gain support across the entire country, rather than specific regions.
Please, read a book about the electoral college, and stop listening to Al Gore about how bad it is.
Right now, the rural parts of New York and California might as well not even have a vote if they disagree with the majority in the cities of Los Angeles and New York. If you really think these cities would have enough pull to decide elections nationally without the electoral college, it's pretty Fake Sugar Dick (WARNING, NOT THE REAL SUGAR DICK!) to argue that the rural areas of those states have any say at all with it.
I would rather the rural areas of TWO states have no say than the Rural areas of an entire country.
Who cares what some rural hayseeds think about an issue in the proposed straight election? All I have to do to win an election is hit LA, New York, Chicago, and a few more key cities, promise them cheaper bagels and lower Taxi fees and I have it. Well, I might also need a winning smile, I'll get back to you when I've got that too.
Look, there have only been 4 presidents elected while losing the popular vote (only 1 since the 1800's), and each time it was by a very small margin. The cities play a major role, but it's not like 100% of the "big city vote" is going to go to 1 candidate.
Why don't you want everyone's vote to count?
Your argument goes hand in hand with mine. So much so, that it's odd we are disagreeing. We are worried about the same thing and can use the 4 presidential elections not carrying a majority to support both our arguments. I've got one of my textbooks somewhere (probably back home) that goes into pretty good arguments as to why we should retain this system and the advantages it has.
Now, if we had a multiple party system, where even us Country Bumpkins could field a candidate to get behind, then I'd be much more willing to get behind destroying the electoral college. As it stands, our two giant parties would simply put forth the best "City vote" candidate and the rest of us who have concerns outside of suburbia would have someone to push for our interests.
Plus, if you want to get technical, you should realize we are a Union of States, and that each State has it's own Government subject to one Federal Government (I'm not trying to be patronizing, honestly). If you were to take the Electoral College away, it's tantamount to taking away statehood in a fashion. Why even have each state elect Senators? Why not just have a massive election for those as well? Then we could all have some sweet Tammany Hall representation!