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So if you believed something would be beneficial to the country, and you could achieve that by exploiting a loop-hole in the system, you would choose not to do that and try to make it happen in a more difficult manner? I can see arguments for both sides on this. On the face of it, you might say: of course, it's the only honorable thing to do to do it the right way. On the other hand, if you believe what you are trying to do would benefit the country, and the way things currently are is detrimental to the country, wouldn't choosing the more difficult path mean purposefully delaying the progress of the country? It's another way to say “the ends justify the means”. So I see your point about doing things in a more straight-forward manner, but it's debatable.

Sadly, the trend is such that we cannot reform direct election of Senators, who should be super-ambassadors of their respective states.

It raises the issue of what the modern concept should be of the states in our federal system (which has been treated with contempt along with constitutional details systematically and generally since the 1930s) and ideally, extending to metropolitan area government (which should be outside-in given the wisdom we have acquired over decades — failed central cities should be subject to suburban oversight and management, not vice versa!).

Do the people in Michigan or Georgia really believe they will have any influence in the coming one party state when the Preisdnet is really elected between the Iowa caucues and the super tuesday primarie?

So, the issue raised by the National Popular Vote legislation is not about whether there will be “mob rule” in presidential elections, but whether the “mob” in a handful of closely divided battleground states, such as Florida, get disproportionate attention from presidential candidates, while the “mobs” of the vast majority of states are ignored. In 2004, candidates spent over two thirds of their visits and two-thirds of their money in just 6 states and 99% of their money in just 16 states, while ignoring the rest of the country.

The current system does NOT provide some kind of check on the “mobs.” There have been 22,000 electoral votes cast since presidential elections became competitive (in 1796), and only 10 have been cast for someone other than the candidate nominated by the elector's own political party. The electors are dedicated party activists who meet briefly in mid-December to cast their totally predictable votes in accordance with their pre-announced pledges.

Not a single legislative bill has been introduced in any state legislature in recent decades (among the more than 100,000 bills that are introduced in every two-year period by the nation’s 7,300 state legislators) proposing to change the existing universal practice of the states to award electoral votes to the candidate who receives a plurality (as opposed to absolute majority) of the votes (statewide or district-wide). There is no evidence of any public sentiment in favor of imposing such a requirement.

Let us not break with the founders who felt that the People would have far too much power, and the states far too little, if the President was popularly elected.

1) If the vote were close enough at the national level to be within the margin of error, there would be pandemonium. Can you imagine a national re-count? It's true that it would be very unlikely to happen, but we'd need to consider the possibility. One thing that would be nice is to come up with ways to ensure a more accurate count in the first place.

2) We'd have to re-think how third-party candidates would play into the system. Today, even if a third party got 10% of the vote, they would be unlikely to win any state, so the winning candidate would still get over 50% of the electoral college. However, if we went to a NPV system, that 10% could cause the winning candidate to get less than 50% of the national vote, which would now be the vote that mattered. I would not be comfortable handing the presidency someone who got 45% of the vote, versus someone else that got 44%. And a national run-off would probably be out of the question. Perhaps the solution would be a “second choice” vote, but getting all of the states to agree on that is another issue.

In summary, before we get rid of the electoral college too hastily, let's remember that there were logistical problems that it solved, which would need to be solved in other ways.