There was a discussion over on Usenet in which people were whining about how unfair it was that Gore didn’t win the presidency, even though he got a majority of the vote (he didn’t really–there’s no way to know that within the margin of error of vote counts, so close was the election), because of that anachronistic electoral college thingie. I pointed out that there’s nothing at all anachronistic about it, and that in fact it’s arguable that it’s needed more than ever, with modern media. If the president were directly elected, all a candidate would have to do is ad buys in the major media markets, and voters in places like Wyoming and Alaska would be effectively disenfranchised, since the candidates would have no need to pay any attention to them.
It occurs to me that, in fact, a lot of California’s mess could be alleviated by instituting an electoral college. As it is now, while there are legislators representing rural counties, they’re overwhelmed by those from the cities, and the entire state (most of which is in fact quite rural) is run by Sacramento.
I’m not sure exactly what the mechanism to restore some balance might be, but it would probably involve having electors proportional to state senator and representatives from some kind of new district analogous to states within the state, to at least insure that the governor was more broadly representative of all the state’s constituencies, rather than just LA, San Diego and the Bay Area. Of course, given the current political structure, implementing such a reform is probably a fantasy.
[Early afternoon update]
Just by coincidence, here’s an article by Henry Lamb defending the electoral college.