65% of U.S. adults say the way the president is elected should be changed so that the winner of the popular vote nationwide wins the presidency.
65% of U.S. adults say the way the president is elected should be changed so that the winner of the popular vote nationwide wins the presidency.
The electoral college was created at a time when faster-than-horse communication didn’t exist. It made sense then, but has not grown with the times.
I fail to see how it ever made sense.
The year is 1780. The printing press is the pinnacle of technology, there’s no such thing as an adding machine. Most correspondence is done on parchment with a quill pen. The majority of Americans cannot read or write. Information cannot travel beyond earshot faster than a galloping horse. Elect a president by popular vote. You have four months.
That’s not even it. At the time the Constitution was adopted, there were states like Virginia that had a lot of people, but rather few voters. They were afraid that they wouldn’t have a real say in who the president was. The Electoral College was a way to inflate slave states’ power, and entice them to join the Union.