The Electoral College: Picking a President

Yes and I hope they are properly teaching the election process in our schools today as they did over 20 years ago when I learned about it in 6th grade U.S. history class. If electors are expected to vote in line with the popular vote of their state then why have electors in the first place? If electors are legally allowed to change their vote based on party lines or influence of popular vote on a national level and not state level then why do we have judges threatening legal action towards electors? Election reform definitely needs to be on the agenda for our Congress since the current system no longer reflect the will of the majority of citizen voters.

LTC Greg Henning Interesting video. The number that surprised me was that only 99% of the time has the electoral college voted for the person who won in their state. I would have expected it to be 100%. We are a republic. A republic that does not have direct voting. States decide how their electors are chosen. The states could have a donkey race an elephant through a swamp if they wanted to, but they don't. The will of the people is supposed to be represented. The electoral college was supposed to balance the playing field. Originally with the 2/3 rule in place it balanced the more populous north against the south. Thankfully we have evolved to a point where everyone, theoretically, has the same voice. We need this thing fixed.
I personally would like to see a ban on political parties altogether. Let anyone who wishes to run, and meets the requirements run. No more conventions. No more primaries. No more pre-defined number of electoral votes to win the election. Everyone votes for the candidate of their choice, then let the Electoral votes broken up based on percentages. Who would have won the election this year if all candidates who started in the Republican Primaries, all candidates who ran in the Democrat Primaries, and all the independents/third party candidates were on the ballot? How many Electoral votes would that candidate have won? How much tax payer money would be saved by not funding primary elections?

I am amazed at the strident whining from the left about the Electoral College. What a bunch of hypocrites. Up until 21:00 hours on 8 November 2016 Clinton was secure in her arrogance that the Electoral College would grant her victory because her much vaunted electoral wall would not be breached. She arrogantly and divisively referred to anyone who did not support her as bigots and deplorable human beings with barely concealed disgust for the rednecks and cretins of ‘flyover’ America ; referring to them as racist and misogynistic and homophobic. Now, the liberal political and cultural establishment is surprised and shocked that the the electoral college was used by her opponent to win an improbable victory against them. They are aghast that factory workers, the veterans, the cops, the kitchen help, people who plow the fields, make the trains run, pick up the trash and keep the country together and keep it moving had the insolence to think for themselves. John Adams once said "...Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence..." The facts are that the Trump team was fully aware that the United States is comprised of 3,797,000 square miles and that there are 3,141 counties in the United States. Trump won 3,084 of them while Clinton won 57. Further there are 53 cities in America whose metro areas exceed 1 million in population. In 2016 Hillary Clinton won 47 of those 53 cities, a result that encompassed 154 million people, or 48 per cent of the population. However, her campaign ignored the 52 per cent of the population that encompasses the rural vote and that rural vote beat her and her urban voters, and it beat them badly; thus giving Trump a 306 to 232 Electoral College advantage. In point of fact Clinton's loss in the 2016 election came down to the plight of Rust Belt voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan and Wisconsin. She ignored them and took their votes for granted - again that much vaunted blue electoral wall. What was even more striking was the fact that after spending 1.2 Billion Dollars Clinton and her Thirty Something Geniuses behind her campaign still failed to carry 194 of the 207 counties that voted for Obama either in 2008 or 2012, thus propelling Trump to the Whitehouse. So this is not about the popular vote - it is about the fact that one campaign connected with Middle America and one - due to its arrogance and derision toward the residents of "flyover country" did not. As my Poly Sci professor once said "...all politics is local..." Seems that Conway took that to heart and Clinton's team just ignored it.