I post this for my politics types group from time to time. Maine is a good state--what with their three electoral college votes and all--because they do divide them up. It's a very convoluted process though--again to divide three votes--and if you ever have insomnia you can look into it.
Why I like the Electoral College:
In theory it does prevent mob rule to an extent. We are supposed to be a Constitutional Republic not run by the mob. Because of larger inner city populations and huge, populous states like CA and NY, mob rule is exactly what we would get and it would likely be liberal. Straight popular vote isn't the way to go for anyone with conservative values.
Why I don't like the Electoral College:
In practice if TX and CA ever get on the same page politically, we'll be governed by those two states the same as we would if there was a straight popular vote, thus removing the very reason that makes the EC useful in the first place. TX is a lot more likely to flip to blue before CA ever goes red.
Winner takes all is no good. At the moment why would Trump waste a dime campaigning in CA? If he loses 99% to 1% he gets the same zero EC votes that he would get losing 51% to 49%. I won't look it up because nobody reads a text wall anyway, but you can safely guess 20-30% of CA who voted Trump had no voice in the 2016 election. If you like to vote third party, forget about it. The same would hold for those out of TX who voted for Clinton. The only state that doesn't follow winner take all is Maine.
If we're going to make "weird changes" to the way our votes are represented, I would prefer they keep the EC but divide those EC votes in proportion to the percentage each candidate received in the popular vote.
Example: CA has 55 EC votes if the Republican managed to take 30% of the popular vote, he would be awarded 16.5 EC votes, the Democrat would get 38.5. This way everyone in the state would get a voice. I was keeping the math simple but if a third party candidate managed to pull in anything they too would be a part of the proportion. I'm just fantasy booking and I know they'll never do it, but I feel it would be a lot more fair and make it worthwhile for the candidates to campaign everywhere.
