[driveway]

Originally Posted by butterfly

Because that isn't federalism. There are no "united states" (lower case intended) when they don't even exist. What would be the purpose of states, then? To have different license plates? It is the states that gave birth to the national government, not the other way around. The national government exists at the behest of the people and the states. We aren't amending the constitution to abolish the electoral college because we don't want to, so the states won't ratify it. Who would vote to diminish their voice in Washington DC?

And for the ends-justify-the-means crowd, be careful what you wish for. California, Texas, Florida, New York, and Ohio are the top five states in population per electoral vote.

The people of the US have wanted to abolish the EC for years:

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/i...toral-college/

For years, a majority of Americans have opposed the Electoral College. For example, in 1967, 58 percent favored its abolition, while in 1981, 75 percent of Americans did so.

However, recent political trends have linked the Electoral College to partisan preferences:

In 2000, while the presidential election outcome was still being litigated, a Gallup survey reported that 73 percent of Democratic respondents supported a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College and move to direct popular voting, but only 46 percent of Republican respondents supported that view. This gap has since widened as after the 2016 election, 81 percent of Democrats and 19 percent of Republicans affirmatively answered the same question.

Lest anyone think that eliminating the EC is some new idea coming out of Democrats' frustration with losing elections but winning the popular vote:

In total, over the last two centuries, there have been over 700 proposals to either eradicate or seriously modify the Electoral College. ... Congress nearly eradicated the Electoral College in 1934, falling just two Senate votes short of passage. In 1979, another Senate vote to establish a direct popular vote failed, this time by just three votes. Nonetheless, conversation continued: the 95th Congress proposed a total of 41 relevant amendments in 1977 and 1978, and the 116th Congress has already introduced three amendments to end the Electoral College.