What are the pros and cons to moving to a purely populous voting system? Have other countries made this move and how did it play out? I bet someone here is an expert on this topic.
Electoral college essentially requires cross-regional appeal in order to win.
We also have to remember that there are some really key states to the US that don't have population. Ex: Alaska and Hawaii.
It's not good to lose states (or regions) from the union based purely on votes cast from more populated regions.
But it does need to be damn close to # of votes. The electoral college is not perfect but it's pretty masterful.
Puerto Rico has 0 representation, and yet they're still part of the united states (ok, plenty of puerto rican might want a different arrangement... but my point is that you'll lose Puerto Rico before losing Alaska)
And it could get to the point where they wish to exit the union. Let's say you lose the farmland and Alaska and some other important, but low population states.
Is that worth it so everyone could say that the most votes will always win?
We already have a system where candidates can just ignore states. They really can't ignore regions though with the electoral college. They have to have some cross regional appeal to win. That's a good thing.
Straight popular votes is too risky for little gain.
I care more about the states and their rights, the preservation of the union, the country's assets, and other things than ensuring that every vote is counted 1:1 in practice. For many, yes, their vote will not matter depending on who they vote for and where they live. But the founders anticipated more than most realize.
It's like when you have an election with 10 candidates. Nobody gets a majority, but some people are like - whoever gets the most votes should win!
That's not likely to be the best result.
I'm a big fan of keeping it simple. But I don't believe a straight popular vote would be a better system with our history, today's divisiveness and the goals of preserving the union.
You’d think the giant bribes—oops, I mean, farm subsidies would help with that.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/12/us/politics/trump-farmers...
Which I sure do appreciate!
Doesn’t mean it’s not a tremendous distortion of the market and the environment.
https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/state-export-data/ann... says the top exporters are California (blue), Iowa (purple), Illinois (blue), Minnesota (blue), Nebraska (red), and Texas (red). And even so, the margins are not huge - at most about 2/3 and 1/3, and usually closer - so the idea of "red states" or "blue states" doesn't quite make sense, I think.
EDIT: I ran the data - looking at the 2020 results (and rounding off Maine to D and Nebraska to R), "blue" states have $64B agricultural exports and "red" states have $73B agricultural exports. So the answer is that while red states export a bit more, it can hardly be described as one feeding the other.
The democratic nominee has won the popular vote in 7 out of the 8 previous presidential elections, including 2016 when Clinton won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College.
Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000 but lost the Electoral College to George Bush.