It was necessary at the time yes, it's just drastically outlived its usefulness.

quantummagic 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Useful to who? It's working exactly as intended. You shouldn't get to unilaterally change the terms of a contract. If both parties agree, then sure. But if not, you have to accept the good with the bad, it's a compromise. We've gotten a lot more out of the deal than it has ever cost.

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baseballdork 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

> It's working exactly as intended.

I think the founders would be pretty surprised to see the vast majority of electoral votes being determined all-or-nothing by the popular vote of the citizens of the state. If that was how they intended it to work, you might think they would've set it up that way in the first place.

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TulliusCicero 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Useful to who?

To the electorate at large.

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Alive-in-2025 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The electoral college was invented in part to increase the ability slave states at the founding of the country keep a certain amount of control - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/electoral-college-slav....

It set up the critical vulnerability that we have today, that in states where the votes are close at the state level, switching just a handful of votes completely moves the votes in the electoral college. This will be a continuing temptation, and a weakness of the us system. The 200 or 300k votes in swing states that had Biden beating Trump and then Trump beating Harris this time is not a great thing in democracy.

So this vulnerability makes it a potential attraction to steal votes. There was the notorious recorded phone call when Trump called up the Secretary of State in Georgia and said he only needed 11,700 votes, please give them to him.

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quantummagic 4 days ago | parent [-]

How does any of that change anything I've said?

They explicitly negotiated the electoral college to protect their ability to not be overwhelmed by more populous states, and forever maintain their voice in the union. It is working exactly as intended, and is essentially a contract we are all a party to.

We don't let one party unilaterally change other contracts, why should we here? It seems you'd have to be a very big hypocrite to support such a thing. You should honour the deal or find a way to renegotiate it that makes everyone happy, not just yourself.

	▲	ElevenLathe 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		For one thing, the social contract among the states was already changed in the 1860s. We're no longer some loose confederation of independent states. The Feds are in charge, whether you like it or not, and the states are effectively administrative divisions, whether you like it or not. We literally fought a war about this and the "states' rights" people lost. For another, we're not bound to contracts between people who are long dead. For another, the constitution (little c, not the actual document) is not a literal contract. That's a methaphor. Finally: Why do you, as a person, want a system where land can vote? Or are you a parcel of land pretending to be a person?

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potato3732842 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Electoral college is a red herring.

Direct election of senators has been way worse for the country. You need something that represents the states as entities.

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ahmeneeroe-v2 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Nope. I find it incredibly useful.