Ahy, maybe its a boone for those who hate campaign commericals... EC or no EC some of the electorate will not be in play.

Poetic justice would have been for Kerry to win EC and lose the PV in a repeat of 2000.

Without having read the article, I suppose that is partly because states like CA that are now comfortably blue have grown in size and EVs, but then so have Texas and FL.  The more R midwest and mountain states have shrunk, but so has NY.

Many people have observed that while many conservative states are growing in population, the people coming in are often liberal, and don't necessarily leave their politics at home. AZ and NV come to mind, as both have gained some people that CA has lost, while CA gained largely from immigration from outside the US in the last census period.

Given the large Dem base, it would make sense not only to contest the swing states, but to poach the Red states that are gaining the most population.  

Most voters are isolated. This goes fist in glove
with most neighborhoods being torn up by TV and exurban-type planning that isolates them geographically (they have to use their car to go meet other people) and by gate. So you end up with
nobody knowing anybody else, this is important - because it helps TV viewership - thats why its there. For now.

But TV viewership has been on rapid decline. 18-24 yr old demographic sees a reduction in TV viewing almost 20%. 16-18's are down almost 35% , and watch on average 2 hours less TV now than they did just a few short years ago.

So you're talking about a party that focusses on lining the pockets of a few media buyers in these states. Its no wonder that they want the bargain bin (ie, two states here, one there) = they're not getting their money's worth.

The electoral college has little to do with this,
its sort of match play versus lowest score. Often lowest score will win. But to win a match, you have to get the lowest score.

You see, what is defined as a 'swing' state is often very much not swinging at all... the parties are really out there selling this idea that only a few are in play because thats all they want to try to saturate. Its not working.

The party can simply adopt a stance that all states are in play, texas, whatever.

Popular Vote - Imagine in 2000 we had had a PV system. The recount? ALL the votes. Everywhere. This type of system encourages fraud. Imagine, all they would have to do is "create" more GOP votes in Utah, Idaho, Mississippi, Ect and no one would challange them.

Distric EC voting - We have so few contested congressional districts because of gerrymandering, this would only make it worse.

The effect of third parties - The EC forces a result even when less than 50% vote in anyone state. In 1992 Ross Perot got a lot of votes, but no EC votes. This is one of the best reasons to have an EC, since single issue groups can't win a state. Make any changes, and we end up with minority governments like Italy is famous for. Like it or not, the EC favors those that can build broad co-alitions.

The real key to elections is getting an honest count. At least the EC brings the focus down to just a few swing states. I see that as an advantage.

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A well-designed electoral system might include obstacles to thwart an overbearing majority. But direct, national voting has none. Under raw voting, a candidate has every incentive to woo only the largest bloc-- say, Serbs in Yugoslavia. If a Serb party wins national power, minorities have no prospect of throwing them out; 49 percent will never beat 51 percent. Knowing this, the majority can do as it pleases (lacking other effective checks and balances). But in a districted election, no one becomes president without winning a large number of districts, or "states"- -say, two of the following three: Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia. Candidates thus have an incentive to campaign for non-Serb votes in at least some of those states and to tone down extreme positions--in short, to make elections less risky events for the losers. The result, as George Wallace used to say, may often be a race without "a dime's worth of difference" between two main candidates, which he viewed as a weakness but others view as a strength of our system.

The founding fathers were not experts on voting power. Many wanted an electoral college simply because they distrusted the mob. A large electorate, they believed, falls prey to passions, rumors, and "tumult." Electors were supposed to consider each candidate's merits more judiciously, not blindly follow the popular will. Nowadays, of course, whoever wins the popular vote in any state wins all the electoral votes in that state automatically (except in Maine, which divides its electoral votes). We no longer need human bodies to cast electoral ballots, Natapoff says. That part of the system is indeed archaic. But it has worked beautifully, he insists, as a formula for converting one large national contest into 51 smaller elections in which individual voters have more clout. The Madisonian system, by requiring candidates to win states on the way to winning the nation, has forced majorities to win the consent of minorities, checked the violence of factions, and held the country together. "We have stumbled onto something that not everyone appreciates," Natapoff says. "People should understand it before they decide to change it."
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The article then goes on to describe, using mathematics, why you vote is MORE IMPORTANT in the electoral college system.  This is a great article, worth a subscription to Discover all by itself.

This was national news the last Nov. Because on the Colorado ballot was this proposal. The voters turned it down. If poll numnbers were good for Bush or Kerry they did not want the issue to pass. If numbers where not good, they wanted it to pass so that they pick up some electorate votes.

1. All of California's electoral votes go to the winner of the national popular vote.

2. This goes into effect only when identical provisions have been put into effect in states with a total of 270 EV.

So large states want to be the big prize, and small states want the extra 2 senate votes.

The EC is here to stay. We would be better off figuring out how to win more states. Going after all 50 states in Congress would be a good start.

After the confusion of that election, the electoral system was changed by making the electoral votes count for a ticket of president and vice president.  Of course then most states actually had electors rather than voters.  Seems like they should have gone direct to the voters.

ex. if you believe you're in california, and your
vote doesn't count etc.  well it does, anywhere.
EC isn't the issue at all.