Replying to Steven Mitchell about the Electoral College - apologies for the long delay.
What I said was that the *good* and *intended* property of the Electoral College is that it guards against factionalism. It forces presidential candidates to have widespread geographic support, rather than concentrated support in just one region. I consider that to be a positive for the long-term stability of the country. By contrast, the Maine/Nebraska approach of split electors takes away this feature - if it were to be implemented by all the states - which it is unlikely to. So, I consider the Maine/Nebraska approach to make the system worse by removing it's most positive feature.
From my view, I don't think there is a simple or easy solution from our current status as a union. I think an improvement might be to expand the Senate, so the largest states have three Senate seats instead of two. For consistency, I might say if a state is more than 50% over the average state population, it should get a third seat.
I'm sure you do think that is a better solution. It doesn't solve the issue you addressed in the first paragraph as well as the Maine/Nebraska approach does. What it does do is conveniently lock in the rule of Democrats forever. Not to mention create a nightmare for the census--as if there aren't already enough politics around that.
I feel like we're talking past each other here. As I said, I think the Maine/Nebraska approach makes factionalism *worse*. Look at it this way: Currently, the Democrats have no motivation to make blue states like California any more blue. Likewise, the Republicans have no motivation to make Texas more red. Instead, they concentrate on spreading to more moderate states.
If all states were to use the Maine/Nebraska approach, then there would be motivation for the parties to make states more extreme. That would lead to even more California-vs-Texas antipathy and hatred then we already have. People are already talking about civil war, and that trend would make the divide even worse.
Because of this, I feel the current status quo is better than the Maine/Nebraska approach. The elected President has always been within 1-2% of popular vote, which is a minor effect given reducing factionalism.
However, I notice you didn't respond about how other countries should use the Electoral College. As I said earlier, there is nothing in the Electoral College per se that favors rural voters - or any other group. It purely depends on the lines of division among the states. In another country, it's quite possible that the division of states could favor urban voters over rural - if that other country had more small urban states like Delaware and Connecticut. In such a country, urban voters would be even more dominant because of the Electoral College, would you still favor it as a system?
I feel like the Electoral College and the Senate is incomplete. Politically, there really needs to be some underlying philosophy about what is allowed to be a state and what doesn't - and what representation it gets. Instead, it's just at the mercy of individual acts of Congress.
Look, I'm fine with leaving things the way they are. There should be a counter force to the concentrated interests, and every state by being a state having essentially +2 electoral votes past their rough population is as good a solution as any. It worked for the founders when New York and Virginia dominating was the worry. With a few blips over adding free/slave states in pairs to kick the can down the road, it's worked most of the time since.
Again, the original stated worry by the proponents of removing the electoral college is that people in states dominated by one party have no effective say in the presidential election.
To be clear, I'm also fine with the status quo. Who are you saying expressed this "original stated worry"? Was it someone in this thread, or just that you've heard that argument somewhere else? I agree that I've heard it, but I think there is good reason not to buy into it because of the factionalism it encourages.