One of the problems with today’s electoral process regardless of system is that the analytics are too strong. The dollars per electoral college seat are likely compared across a whole host of strategies. So in any system the parties will determine how to best spend and mobilize to minimize cost per vote. So the best you can do is to have a system to equalize that cost. I suspect if you tried to make the influence of each person cost the same amount of money you would end up in a very undemocratic system.
One thing I would question is the result of Hillary losing to trump with 66 million votes to 63 million votes a perversion of Democracy? If the goal of democracy is to reflect the will of the people then all of the people who for whatever reason didn’t vote aren’t being measured. (I do think that non voters likely lean blue given age based voting patterns). We don’t even know who would win if everyone voted, We just had a very large non random poll. So before we worry about EC I think mandatory voting would be the first thing to change. This at least gets everyone vote to the table to be influenced.
Another thought I have had is is having states with relatively equal numbers of republicans and democrats deciding elections actually a good thing. My thought would be that purple states have lower levels of polarization then Red or Blue states (This could be completely incorrect though). So if the purple states are less polarized then campaigns have to be less polarized as well. This is better then designing your message to maximizing turnout in California and New York.
So despite not being direct democracy it might actually work okay. In the list of problems in the US that need to be fixed for democracy I’m not sure the EC makes it very high.
Things I would fix first:
Automatic voter registration
Allow felons to vote without condition
Equitable distribution of polling areas
More independence in redistricting
Change to combined Primaries where the top 2 candidates regardless of party affiliation are put on the ballot or mandate open primaries everywhere.
The Senate actually doing it’s job to check executive power
Turing over Citizens United
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