- ensures that a president must win by appealing to citizens across demographics; merely winning those votes from urban centers will not be enough if they ignore the concerns of those in more rural areas and states.
- serves as a check on the power of more populous states and prevents a "tyranny of the majority".
- maintains the integrity of the United States as a representative republic.
- preserves the intentions of the Founding Fathers with respect to the function of the government
- prevents the election from being decided by only a few states
Citizens of different regions may differ significantly in their political concerns and be impacted differently by legislation. If the president only needed to win the popular vote, the argument goes, then he would be able to ignore or sacrifice the considerations of these less populous rural areas for the sake of the more populous areas. The electoral college ensures that the president has widespread acceptance across these demographics.
My question with respect to this argument is: why limit our concern to only geographic demographics? Different ethnic groups may also differ significantly in their political concerns. If our worry is that a purely popular vote will allow the concerns of some demographics to overshadow others why shouldn't we also require a president to have widespread appeal across different ethnic demographics? Or religious ones? Educational, economic, or age-related ones? Limiting it to geographic concerns seems entirely arbitrary.
Does the EC serve as a check on the power of more populous states? Maybe. But there is already a check on the power of states by virtue of the Senate where all states are afforded equal representation. The very fact that the House is (ostensibly) proportional to population is in contrast to this. Also in this case the EC isn't merely a check on power, but in fact allows the minority party to actively do something, namely elect a president. That goes beyond just a check on the more populous states.
We are a representative republic by virtue of our legislatures where bills are proposed and voted on by our representatives. None of this however has to do with how our representatives themselves are elected, which is in fact by popular vote. How would electing our highest representative in the same manner somehow undermine or contradict our government being a representative republic? I don't see it.
Reading The Federalist Papers as well as Madison's comments of the Federal Convention I fail to see how the implementation of the EC had absolutely anything to do with protecting rural areas from being eclipsed by urban areas. (this would hardly be a concern seeing as how at the time well over 90% of the population was rural.) It in every way appears that Madison saw it as an unfortunate concession for the sake of ratifying the constitution which was seen as preferable to falling back to the Articles of Confederation. While Hamilton supported the Electoral College, it wasn't for the sake of protecting smaller states and he still desired that it be proportional to population.
Often a worry that "only a few states will decide the election" is expressed when the idea of a popular vote comes up. Two points. 1. This is already the case with the EC. Rather than having a few populous states deciding the election it simply shifts to a few swing states deciding the election and candidates spending a disproportionate time campaigning there. The EC does nothing to alleviate this worry. 2. If we change to a purely popular vote then it is not "states" that decide anything; it is the people that make up those sates that decide. Those state lines are completely meaningless with respect to a popular vote. One may as well draw an arbitrary line around a densely populated area of Wyoming and one around a less dense area of California and make the argument "why should this city in Wyoming have more voting power than this city in California?".
As it stands I think I support a national popular vote or at least expanding the House by the Wyoming rule to more accurately reflect the population. This better encompasses the equality among voters and holds true to the principle of one man one vote while the winner takes all approach of the current makeup of the EC serves to reduce voter turnout and make the value of a vote dependent on where it is cast.
