The Push to Abolish the Electoral College, Part 2: Possible Solutions

I wanted to include all this at the end of yesterday's post, but that piece took a lot longer to write than I expected.  I'm chalking it up to a healthy dose of writer's block plus lots of writing something, striking it out, writing something new, then going back to what I originally wrote.  Repeat until insane.  That post was an absolute grind to write.  Plus, I got distracted by Atlanta's beat-down of the Packers.

Anyway, here are a handful of off-the-cuff suggestions I have for improving the Electoral College.

First, eliminate "winner take all" districts.  There's something deeply wrong with a rule that lets my vote contribute to Candidate A's electoral vote tally even if I voted for Candidate B.  Unfortunately, forty-eight states play by "winner take all" rules.  This practice is truly undemocratic, because it invalidates the votes of everyone but the people who picked the winning candidate.  I propose that all of the states adopt a proportional allocation system: the number of electoral votes a candidate gets is based on the percentage of the popular vote they received.  I didn't come up with this idea, but I think it makes a lot more sense than the "winner take all" rule.

Second, redraw the outrageously gerrymandered districts to make them more reflective of their inhabitants.  Gerrymandering has been a problem for a long time, and has been derisively described as "politicians getting to choose their voters." The Supreme Court is hearing a case about partisan gerrymandering right now, and I'm glad to see the practice is being challenged in court.  I just hope SCOTUS rules against gerrymandering.

Third, let's take a look at mandatory voting as a stop-gap solution while we figure out why so few people are voting.  (Hey now! Whoa! I said we should just consider it.  Stop yelling at me.)  I was going to suggest implementing mandatory voting and leaving it at that (so maybe that yelling is justified), because it would solve the problem of low voter turnout, therefore making election results more reflective of the overall population.  Unfortunately, this is like a kid shoving all their toys, stray clothes, etc into the closet instead of actually cleaning their room.  It gives the appearance of everything being fine while ignoring the issue.  Something is wrong when 41% of eligible voters didn't vote in the 2016 election.  Maybe those people don't feel represented, and that's a symptom of bigger issues.  I was going to write about those bigger issues, at least as I saw them; but I realized pretty quickly that those issues were a lot more than I was prepared to tackle right now.  I haven't done enough research or thinking to write about them, and besides they're outside the scope of this post, so I'm tabling them for another day. 

Those are a few quick and simple solutions I came up with off the top of my head.  They probably have flaws, but I wanted to offer up some ideas, even imperfect ones. I don't think the Electoral College is perfect, but I think these changes could improve it a lot.  But even with its flaws, I think the Electoral College is a better system than a direct popular vote.  Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.