Yep, rich elites buying an election. Gotta love it. This is one of the many reasons why I could never be a liberal; yet another example of slimy hypocrisy.
I'm more pointing out the notion that the EC gives so much power dispropotionately to small states, that small focal swings in population can completely throw the election to another. The margins of victory in a lot of states is ridiculously tiny. Even texas (38 million people I believe) which trump won by 10 percent only meant he won by a little above 800,000 votes (or about a 0.5 percent of the population)
In fact there was a libertarian movement that I believe is ongoing to capture NH. Apparently to win every race on every level for the libertarian party they would need about 400,000 people voting as a bloc, and they have a movement/program encouraging libertarians from other states to relocate to NH as a means of totally dominating the state and having a bigger say on the national stage. That is insane to me, that so few people can have such a huge national impact.
A few points:
1. If the founding fathers believed popular vote was the best method, we wouldn't have the electoral college.
I disagree. First of all, as an outsider but still US citizen, I don't have the same mythical worship of the US constitution far too many here have. Its seen almost as a holy document on some levels and the founding fathers (even that term is a bit of hero worship but whatever) as infallible.
I've seen some extensive discussions about the EC. A lot of scholars argue that it was never about keeping power away from the people (or that was only a minor focus). A lot of it was the lack of technology at the time for rapidly counting votes, delivering news and communication, voting, traveling across the country, etc etc. It just made more sense to have a few people travel and represent the group states in a focal setting because there really was no other way to on a national stage discuss an election results. Today we have twitter and airplanes and cars.
Heck just look at the Amendment about quartering soldiers. Really what relevance does that have today? Our mystically intelligent founding fathers totally nailed that one. They could have put amendments about so much more (term limits, power checks on the supreme court, etc etc). I still find the second amendment totally ridiculous in its lack of qualifiers given the extremes they went to to qualify so much else in the qualification.
A lot of countries mostly in latin america have tried the US constitution as a model. It doesn't really work for them. Its not a universally good system. Its only good if you protect it and constantly adjust it to fit changing times.
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