comment: >
  
  
  Even if it were objectively a bad way to do the presidential election
  
  narrator: which it is.
  
  the power of the Republican party is dependent on its continued existence
  
  No, that’s very much the Senate.
  The electoral college only impacts the presidential election, which is useful but not the way Republicans have leveraged their disproportionate power (e.g. Supreme Court appointments).
  
  The only way to get rid of it is through an amendment to the Constitution and that’s just not going to happen.
  
  Nah, there are other ways like the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Congress could pass a law around faithless electors, etc.
  We could also grow the size of the House. 435 is a stupidly small number given our population growth over the last century. The UK has 650 members in their lower house. That would dilute but not actually solve the EC.
  
  Alternatively, they can sneakily get rid of the advantage the Electoral College has by admitting DC and Puerto Rico as states and increasing the amount of Representatives, thus diluting its advantage.
  
  First, that would add a total of 6 electors (2 senators and minimum 1 representative). That’s a 1% increase in the electoral college. It doesn’t address the issue at all. Adding states would dilute Republican power… in the senate. Not the electoral college.
  Second, the current non-voting house rep from PR is a pro-trump Republican. They would be decidedly purple at best on the national level.
  Republicans will never let DC get statehood voluntarily (although retrocession with Maryland would still be a net-win for Democrats nationally), so you either need to get rid of the senate filibuster or get a senate supermajority while also holding the trifecta in the House and Presidency to push it through. If you can do that, sure, all bets are off.
context: Meanwhile Republican states are changing rules to be more like the electoral college, requiring a majority of counties or districts to pass ballot measures instead of a majority of people. >
  
  It's been a danger since 1824 when John Quincy Adams beat Andrew Jackson despite losing the popular vote.
  And especially recently. A republican president hasn't won the popular vote since 2004. >
  
  And Bush lost the popular vote in 2000, he won in 2004 because of the “rally round the flag effect” of 9/11 and the Iraq and Afghan wars. >
  
  They’ve won it once (2004) since 1988. That’s 7 losses in 8 elections. Yet a Republican has still managed to hold the Oval Office for 12 of those 32 years. >
  
  We don’t elect presidents by popular vote. The sooner democrats stop beating that dead horse and broaden their appeal back to the working class all over the country the better off we will all be. They’d rather play silly diversity games while packing their donors pockets and openly mocking everyone who lives in an area with less than 50,000 people. >
  
  The point of this post is that it's a shame we don't elect by popular vote. 
  And wow, silly diversity games. They get elected by a variety of people, how is that bad? >
  
  They pin their hopes on certain groups to guarantee a win, while ignoring or throwing others under the bus.
  The middle class white worker was the base of the Dem party not that long ago.  Dems stopped campaigning and even blame them for every problem, and are shocked they vote for the other side. >
  
  The Democrats have decreased their focus on the white middle class and have largely diversified. I don't see what's wrong with that. They're not blaming the white middle class for anything. >
  
  It's always been a danger to democracy.
  It was invented to disenfranchise the people.
  So rich assholes have all the power.  Just like all other times in history.  You're either connected or you are fucked. >
  
  Making sure the president has both sufficient popular support to govern and that his popular support is sufficiently distributed throughout the country to enable him to govern effectively: is fascism conceived by the framers of the constitution to fix the problems of other election methods. But actually was meant to disenfranchise modern day democrats. Big. Brain. Moves. >
  
  
  is fascism conceived by the framers of the constitution to fix the problems of other election methods.
  
  Not sure if you meant that as a question, or a statement.
  Either way, good catch. I agree the founders absolutely were fascists.
  I hadn't thought that way before due to the American "education" I received.
  Jews and Blacks suffered at the hands of Nazis and the founding fathers, respectively.  I guess if the Nazis had won WWII after using Jews as slave labor before liquidating them they'd probably see Germany as justified or at least seeing it as a different time, just like we see U.S. history nowadays.  Germany even based their eugenics on pre-existing American programs.
  Then there's the American genocides of indigenous people.  Yup, America is pretty damn fascist. >
  
  I wouldn’t go so far as to say all the founding fathers were fascists, but never forget that the Nazi party learned many of their propaganda tricks from the US, and just tweaked them a bit >
  
  Do away electoral college. Complete shutdown election holiday. Mandatory vote under penalty of law. National election, national popular results. >
  
  Mandatory voting is 100% a violation of freedom of speech >
  
  What if they had a no vote option they could declare in place of a vote to satisfy the mandate.
  You already are not a legal citizen if you do not register your birth, or rather have it done for you or if imitating, you are an illegal alien until you get through the process to become a legal citizen.
  I don't agree with a mandate by law to vote, but I am just saying as a law, an option to file an op out or submit a blank ballot would be necessary and I don't know if that would be enough. >
  
  The electoral college has always been a danger to the people. It wasn't set up for the people. It was set up for the plutocrats. 
  America is a plutocracy and it's weird people are just now looking into that. >
  
  Simple solution (no amendment, majority votes in the house and senate only) is to simply expand the size of the House of Representatives by ~150 to 250 seats.  The math works.  The logic works.  Has the benefit of being the right thing to do. >
  
  The house, which is supposed to represent the populace, has been frozen in size for about a century (Since 1929 to be exact). If we went by the metric the founding fathers intended it would be in the ten thousands.
  Changing that alone would resolve a lot of electoral college nonsense as the college would be around 12,000 votes instead of 500. >
  
  By that logic the Senate has also "become a danger."
  Edit: (/s) because we all know that it is a danger as it is completely undemocratic.
  Makes a complete mockery of one person one vote. >
  
  The Senate was populated by appointment until the early 1900s, and it puts small population states way ahead in the constituent power ratio. The Senate is anti-democratic by design. >
  
  I was just reading that western Massachusetts voters did not want to ratify the US Constitution because the senate was viewed as an anti-democratic institution, so this excellent point was at issue long ago. >
  
  Is "skewer" is the new "slam"? I'm ready for a change. >
  
  The only reason the electoral college 'is a danger' is because congressional ethics, which were never strong to begin with, are now completely indistinguishable from corporate ethics (which are, themselves, nonexistent).
  The answer is not to take away the traceability from the people, through the vote, into the houses of governance. 
  The answer is to close and make punitive any action that seeks to leverage or manipulate an intended body of governance to anything other than those ends defined as being under rightful purview as defined by law. 
  But yeah, sure, keep mudding the water until the only way to clear it is to literally sieve the entire system. 
  Because that's just so effective throughout all human history. 
  ​
  (carefully wipes the excess sarcasm from her fingertips) >
  
  Absolutely! >
  
  There's not much of a point of Democrats criticizing the electoral college.  Even if it were objectively a bad way to do the presidential election, the power of the Republican party is dependent on its continued existence.  So any criticism just looks like a "power grab."  
  The only way to get rid of it is through an amendment to the Constitution and that's just not going to happen.  Alternatively, they can sneakily get rid of the advantage the Electoral College has by admitting DC and Puerto Rico as states and increasing the amount of Representatives, thus diluting its advantage.