General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Can Someone Become President With 24% Of The Popular Vote? [View all]eniwetok
(1,629 posts)Even if we had every state go to a proportional EC vote... someone REJECTED by the People in the popular vote can still win because the entire point of the EC is to magnify the votes of some based on state residence... and to diminish the votes of others. At its most extreme anyone living in WY effectively has a 4x bigger presidential vote than someone in CA.
Whose vote was the EC originally going to magnify? Whites in slave states. Here's Madison at the Constitutional Convention
The people at large was in his opinion the fittest in itself. It would be as likely as any that could be devised to produce an Executive Magistrate of distinguished Character. The people generally could only know & vote for some Citizen whose merits had rendered him an object of general attention & esteem. There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.