Not gun related, but if it stays open I'd like to comment. I think the popular vote is a better system, and feel that in the long run it is better for conservative minded folks and gun rights. With the electoral system at least 35 of the 50 states are non factors months before the election. The outcome is already known and there is ZERO incentive for someone running for election to do anything for those states. The blue states will vote blue, the red states will vote red. You end up with about a dozen battleground states and by the last month of the campaigns only about 1/2 dozen are really important.
I'll use California as an example. It is solid blue and many conservatives decry the state. But consider this. California has 55 electoral votes. In the 2016 election over 4 million Californians voted Republican, yet the Democrats got all 55 electoral votes. Those 4 million votes were more than Alaska, West Virginia, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Utah, Wyoming, Arkansas, and Kansas combined. Those 11 states voted red, but the Republicans only got 47 electoral votes.
I know that conservatives point to the 2000 and 2016 elections as justification for keeping the electoral college. But I would argue that the Republicans would have still won in those years. Changing to the popular vote will completely change campaign strategy and every vote, in every state would be important. And I would also argue that with the popular vote neither Clinton nor Obama would have won a 2nd term. It is a double edged sword. Think about how many conservative votes we are losing in states like California and New York. There are a lot of conservative voters in those states who stay home because of the EC system.
Lots of folks are under the mistaken impression that the EC helps balance the power of smaller states compared to larger states. That simply isn't true and the California vs 11 smaller states in the above example proves it. Having 2 senators from each state regardless of size is what helps give smaller states the same power as larger states. The EC was used in the 1700's due to the limitations of communication and transportation at the time. No reason to continue to use it.
Using the EC makes it much easier for fraud to influence an election too. In 2000 it all came down to Florida which Bush won bu only a few hundred votes after the final talley. If someone from either party wants to illegally influence an election with our current system they only have to work on 2-3 big cities in 2-3 states. If Gore had gotten just a few hundred more votes, in just one city in one state he would have been president rather than Bush in 2000.
