We should abandon the Electoral College.

Delusional

so you disagree somewhat?

Okay you wish to go there. This isn’t high school, Trump doesn’t need the popular vote because that is not how elections are won. Trump receives 78% negative talking points from the media yet is able to garnish great support. Enough to run against a challenger who has manufactured support and the Elites who shoe horned her in.

not sure i follow you. you're in favor of keeping the electoral college? but that means relying on a small number of states to make the call. how is that better for Trump, or anyone?

A simple civic course may explain it better then I could. Yet in a nutshell, without the electoral college. California and New York would decide elections every time, bypassing smaller states.

well CA and NY have a lot more people, so it would be unfair if small states counted equally. but imagine the common scenario where large states were split on two candidates. then small states could make the difference.

Equally so if California and NY gets to pic winner because of their population. it wont be fair for the other 48 states. Rules and laws will favor those two states and only those two states.

but that's not what we're doing. both the popular vote and the electoral college favor large states, yet CA and NY *don't* get to pick the Prez. they just have a bigger say since they have more people.

since small states get only a small number of electoral college votes, does it really help them relative to states with a lot of electoral votes?

Do you think politicians would visit them if they didn't matter?

i'm not saying they don't matter. i'm asking how the electoral college benefits them any more than a simple majority vote of the population.

Hamilton's take from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._68

well he seems to feel that a representation of states more so than directly of the population is important. that's the part that i don't see as plainly best. currently, a state's electors must vote for the candidate who won a majority in their state's popular vote, regardless of whether the majority was strong or slight. so in that sense, it can deviate from the will of the US population as a whole. it's not clear to me that it gives small states any more or less power than they'd have in a simple popular vote. and who the electors are, what their perception of necessary candidate qualities might be, and how well each candidate meets those qualities doesn't matter at all in practice. if Hamilton's proposals were more closely followed, then the College might make more sense. as it is, i don't see a real benefit to anyone.

Awesome response. Also, I think it's somewhat likely a problematic matter of the populace being "easily swayed". By having a 'wise' rep/delegate as a 'firewall' for the Popular Vote, they may be able to prevent popular uprisings/fads from taking hold. - Look at such fads as "Threat to Democracy" ... Still seems warranted.
( BTW: We Are A Constitutional Republic. Not a Democracy.)

Thank you for the 'conversation', and your insights.

Bullshit

ok, ok. he's not that popular.

We need to keep the EC, so that all states matter, but you knew that already, right?

so it's more important that all states matter than that all votes matter?

Yes