I hope I live to see the day when we do away with this nonsense and go to a popular vote. I recently realized this is worse than being disenfranchised; in some sense my vote exists, I just have no say in who it goes to. Because I was counted in the last census, I helped determine how many electoral votes my state will have. But I can be certain every one of those votes is going to Romney, since it's a strongly Republican state.

Unless you live in one of the few swing states, the only real way to vote for President in America is to, every 10 years in time for the census, move to a state that votes for your party. Then your vote is locked in for a decade (even if you move away or die in that time). It's insane.

I thought Kevin Costner gets the deciding vote.

Go popular vote with preferential voting! It's scientific!

Any sense that the electoral college ever made is long since dead. There are some issues where it makes sense to have area / statehood distinctions hold more sway than straight-up popular vote -- that is what the Senate is for. However, the electoral college system is just laughably (or tragically, depending on how cynical you are) messed up.

Ditch the electoral college, add term limits for Senators and Reps., and maybe our US government could go from a "Chernobyl to a mere Three-Mile Island".

You'll never convince the smaller states to get rid of the EC. But it can be somewhat fixed:

* Replace the first past the post with an alternative vote (see one of his other videos)
* Replace the winner take all in every state. The winner of each congressional district gets that district's vote, then the last two votes go to the winner of the state overall. This is perhaps one of the most important changes as it makes it as close to the popular vote as you can get without getting rid of the EC, which as I said, I don't think you'll get enough states to agree to.
* District lines should be drawn by open source software to help eliminate gerrymandering.
* Strict term limits (on both houses and the Supreme Court) and no life-time benefits for any of them that isn't given to every citizen, and every law that applies to citizens applies to them (so no more insider trading being legal for them).

Those few changes alone make it easier to be represented and increases the chance of 3rd parties getting some votes.

I would extend it further with one more important change. We have had 435 Representatives since 1911. It hasn't kept pace with the population growth. With modern technology there is no need for everyone to be in DC. Rather than adjusting those 435 people based on the population of the states, we should go back to the original system of having a Rep for X many people. Perhaps one Rep for every 50,000 or 100,000 people (no less than one for every 250,000). With everyone in their home districts and so many of them it makes it hard to buy them all. With so many Reps it probably means a pay cut, which they should have anyhow, especially getting rid of the life time privileges it comes with now... I would also kill the ability to add amendments to bills that aren't super tightly integrated to the bill, if you can't get your legislation passed without it being hidden as part of another bill, then it shouldn't be passed. Perhaps a lime-item veto of amendments and riders for all members of congress and the President. I say make pay based on the poverty rate and adjust for cost of living in each district... perhaps 2x the poverty rate, that would encourage them to fix poverty (and while we are at it rather than set some random number like $250,000 as a high tax bracket, tax brackets are broken by multiples of the poverty rate as well, so 10x the poverty rate puts you in the same bracket as $250k does today).

This does give ammunition to the libertarian idea. The fact that votes are so states are given sort of equal power to decide their fate, where the local democracy rule. Which would be fine, except that the US does not live in a vacuum, and has, especially since WW2, been instrumental in deciding the fate of the world. One might argue, from a libertarian perspective that that intervention is fundamentally wrong, but the fact of the matter, as Pearl Harbour showed, (and also global issues such as the environment) the US is not isolated, and, increasingly, never will be. As a non-US citizen, the vote now decides more than simply someone (the president) who oversees the actions of the states. It decides the fate of the entire world.

I sometimes wish that I could ignore the US vote. The US, is THE symbol of the enlightenment and progress, and in some sense we should all let it live by itself , but we can't ignore it. For better or worse, it is instrumental in deciding the fate of us all.

Wait! I'm confused.

I thought the Supreme Court picked the president in the case of a tie based upon the party of the president who put them into their seat on the court.

This whole Electoral College thing sounds way more fair (and complicated) than that system.