I think the popular vote is the best way to get every state involved in this day and age. With the way things are now, the states like Oregon where they know the majority of people will vote Democrat are not even a priority. I don't even feel like my vote counts if I don't vote democrat.
Well, there are urban centers throughout the country, but the coastal states seem to have a higher urban-to-rural ratio. The cities are more liberal, everywhere. Even in Texas, places like Dallas go for the Democrats. But in Texas, the cities are drowned out by the high amount of rural voters in the rest of the state...blue dots in an ocean of red. Whereas, along the coasts, there's a lot less rural territory between the cities. It is true, though, that most people are in urban settings these days, which is why the Republicans by and large would be the party that would oppose removing the Electoral College. The Electoral College gives greater weight to geographic area...smaller population states have a much greater proportion of electoral votes than they have proportion of the nation's population. While the winner of the Electoral College tends to win the popular vote too, it's a small structural advantage in favor of the Republicans by and large because it diminishes the power of people living in cities (though not always...while Obama's popular vote lead has actually been expanding as more votes are counted, his Electoral College vote proportion is still going to be larger. The College can also be a structural advantage for the candidate with the better get-out-the-vote state targeting). I'd favor two changes: switching to a straight national popular vote and also switching to a run-off election. First you have a vote with all the eligible candidates and then a second vote for the two highest vote-getters from the first vote. The advantage of the run-off system is to give third party candidates a chance to build a coalition. In a first-past-the-post system (like we currently have), people are afraid to vote for third party candidates, even if they aren't totally satisfied with the two major candidates, because they see it as potentially "throwing their vote away" on someone who has no chance to win. So no third party ever has a chance to slowly build a coalition over multiple cycles. Whereas in a run-off, people could "vote their conscience" and pick the candidate they like best and still know that if their guy doesn't win, they can still impact who their future leader is.
It is, because it was named after Alfred Nobel. But you'll notice that I wasn't capitalizing any of my words in those two sentences and so stylistically I wasn't about to go capitalizing Nobel. What were we talking about again?
In thinking about how to keep both large and small states relevant, perhaps we could go to a system where every district voted for President and then whoever won the state popular vote received the two senate electoral college votes. Nebraska and Maine do something along those lines and I think it's a decent idea. Both parties would hate it because it would be a truly national election, which means that saturating swing states wouldn't be possible and you couldn't just focus in a few states. However, it would mean that television would play less of a role and grass roots would play a bit more.
In the 60s and 70s, newspapers ran post-election maps with each state sized by population. The maps above are the deceptive pro-Republican version. Similarly, Russians prefer a map projection which makes Russia, Canada, Alaska, and Greenland look enormous.
