The electoral college, like most of our flaws, came about because of slavery. When we founded our democracy the country was as divided as it is today, north and south. The south was at a population disadvantage. So the electoral college is based on the number of representatives and Senators in college, affording for low population states and slave states to have an unfair advantage.
The whole thing needs to be reworked.
Where did you learn about this, CNN?
The north and south, today, is not as divided as it was at the formation of the federal union, which was patched together in order to fight a war with King George III and Lord North in Parliament. Patched together despite slavery, mostly located in the south, but stretched as far north as Rhode Island. Some years after that war, the union was firmed up in time of peace, mainly around economics and trade issues, lest the gains from the war be lost. At that time, they decided on two houses as a compromise between proportional representation (the House) and disproportional representation (the Senate), which puts large states at a theoretical disadvantage to small states, whereas proportional representation puts small states at a disadvantage to large states.
You are confusing the electoral college with the 3/5th clause, which was an attempt by the great slave states to further gerrymander the proportional representation in the House, to give slave states more proportional weight than they deserved. The slave states insisted on counting their slaves for proportional representational purposes in the House, and was able to count each slave as worth 3/5th any other man, when counting the census for the state. This translated into more representatives, and proportional to the representatives, more electors.
Eventually it was decided, albeit through some bloodshed, that the 3/5th clause was bullshit. The slaves were not really being represented rightly, and it was unfair to states who opted not to allow slavery. Once you rectify the 3/5th bullshit, then proportional representation starts to rectify around it's intention to distribute representatives and electors proportional to whom ever is allowed to actually vote. Thus, if you complain about electors, that same complaint can be registered about representatives. Do you wish to dissolve the House of Representatives too?
Like the Electoral College, the House of Representatives is weighted by each ten year census. Thus, like the Electoral College, it is weighted towards an older population, which has been in each state longer, by as much as ten years.
One of the sparks of the Civil War was that several slave holding states realized they were going to be outvoted in congress, despite having two senators per state, and the 3/5th clause bullshit. Had nothing to to with the Electoral College. It's why they tried to divide all future states into equal number of slave and free, so they could maintain equilibrium, at least in the Senate, and because of the 3/5th bullshit, hopefully maintain equilibrium in the House too. The chaos that ensued in Kansas, and the backlash to the Dred Scott decision, tended to reveal that slave holding states would eventually be outvoted in the long run, in both houses, and would not be able to maintain slavery anywhere, even in their own states. Again, nothing more to do with the Electoral College than it had to do with the House of Representatives. The backlash to Kansas and Dred Scott gave rise to the Republican Party, and from there, to the rise of Lincoln within it. The slaveholding south could see it would probably never have a majority in congress again, and so, they wished to succeed to insure they could maintain their slaveholding culture.
If you are so concerned about this, you should be equally concerned about the fact that under 18 people are STILL not represented in the House, despite the fact that they are being saddled down with the national debt far into the future. Inflation taxes every child, through their parents. Thus, parents should be given charge to represent every child, not on a 3/5th basis, but on a one to one basis.
The north and south is not as divided because there is, officially, no more slavery. But divisive issues still exist as the Democrats endeavor to leverage migratory gerrymandering, and even to rig elections (like they did in Kansas before the Civil War), to maintain power. The Democrats are literally trying to represent economic migrants, before representing our nations own children...to maintain power. The logic of this is not much better than the logic behind all of the rigging around the great slaveholding states to maintain power.
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