Ability to affect is not the same thing as a direct vote.

Regardless of the recount in Florida or anything like that, Gore won the popular vote in 2000. Had there been no electoral college there would have been no need for a recount and Gore would be president.

Personally I think the electoral college is an antiquated system which is a relic from the days of the pony express when there was no way to quickly send information from one end of the country to the other.

The argument for it is that it maintains states' rights; but personally since it's a Federal office it doesn't make much sense to rejigger the popular vote.

The electoral college effectively causes campaigns to totally ignore certain states because they know the state is either historically Democrat or Republican so there is no need to try and shift the balance. In Wisconsin, which is a swing state, I've been seeing Bush campaign ads since the Democratic primary, and Kerry ads since he got the presumptive nomination. While I was home in Maryland over the summer, which traditionally votes for a Democrat president, I didn't see a single campaign ad. Now that I'm back in wisconsin I'm totally inundated as the election is now only a month away.

But we're stuck with it, since Republicans will cling to outmoded ideals of states' rights even in situations where the states don't really need to have any say. For a federal office it would be far more useful to have a direct vote, and I'd say the same thing if a Republican had benefitted from the change.

 

I'm a fan of the popular vote. If more people voted for you, you should win. Simple as that.

 

I'm pretty sure that we have an electoral college because we are a republic. We elect representatives that vote based on our wants, typically. I like the electoral college. To the person that said we wouldnt need a recount if we used the popular vote in 2000, what about the nation as a whole? the race was still too close, we wouldve needed a nationwide recount.

 

543,895 votes is too close to call?

 

Electoral College was put into place because the founding fathers thought the people were too stupid to make a wise decision.

 

Elecoral College sucks. Popular vote!

 

Yay To the Electoral College

 

:werd: to the both of yall

 

I hope that Kerry wins the electoral and looses the popular vote. Just out of spite

But seriously, the electoral college is outdated, plain and simple.

 

The electoral college is a relic and should be eliminated in favor of Instant-runoff voting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting

As Fatbooty pointed out, the electoral college allows for a scenario where a candidate gets more votes than his opponents and loses the election. It happened twice so far as I know.