Quote Originally Posted by rory_20_uk View Post
The system in the USA is not fit for purpose.

For the President have a proper plebiscite - and why on earth not? The odd system the USA makes no sense.
Have a proper body undertake voting district boundaries. Ideally at a Federal level but I doubt that would work. And some independent oversight.

And wherever possible remove the whole first past the post approach.

But who would want to fix things when it works so well for the current winners? Make a big noise about external influences to the whole broken edifice and ignore the central issue.

The Founders, for good or ill, did NOT want a plebiscite. They viewed that as unrestrained democracy and a virtual assurance of demagoguery. The point of the Electoral College was to restrain this.

As a practical matter, determining the President through a single at large vote might result in a decrease in effective participation, given that so much of the population is congregated in smaller metro areas. The top 50 cities by population represent 50 million persons of our 300 million. Take into account their 'metropolitan areas' and you have almost half the population covered in just these 50 locations. On a practical political level, operatives would tell most candidates to ignore the rest of the country and cater promises, policies etc. to these more populated areas. The potential for a "city mouse trumps country mouse" sea change would be immense.

For whatever flaws it has, the EC system does, at least to some extent, spread the effort candidates must make in reaching the populace with their message (though this too is imperfect). The classic counter argument is, of course, that FPTP systems for ascribing electors to the college is as bad or worse in that candidates can take a small plurality and potentially win an elector rich state with a narrow vote margin that isn't even a majority in the first place. But the system now extent, particularly with two Senators per state being reflected in both Congress and the EC, was designed and still does serve to retain a greater degree of political significance for the smaller polities which make up the union.


Which is not to say that some things could not and should not be improved.

1) FPTP could be improved without discarding the concept by adopting the approach taken by Louisiana. If the winner wins with a majority of the votes cast, it is concluded. If it is only a plurality of the votes cast, they go to a runoff between the two highest vote getters.

2) The EC could be moved to the system currently in use by Maine and Nebraska, with both Electors that reflect the Senate representation going to the overall FPTP winner in the state, while each Congressional district decides its elector based on the votes in that district.

3) The gerrymandering of Congressional districts is, I agree, abominable. There really should be a federal commission that decides these along the longs of the BRAC commission, operating under the aegis of the FEC. This one just plain sucks, and as Rory suggests it needs to be altered.