The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States
Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 68
The move to eliminate the electoral college has been in motion for a long time and has been picking up recently. Here is an article on the HuffyPost from 2007 where the author comes out a bluntly states the reason the progressive lefts want to abolish the electoral college:
Bottom line, it could reduce the GOPs ability to elect a Republican President. And since Republicans control a large number of small population states, it would be difficult to get it passed by the senate and then ratified by the requisite number of states. (emphasis added).
The progressive left wants to reduce the ability of conservatives to elect a President. It is not about fairness or giving all people more say in the Federal government.
For nostalgia’s sake, here is another excerpt of the 2007 article.
History was altered forever with Bush’s election in 2000 via the Electoral College (or some would say, the Supreme Court, but the contest would have been resolved long before via the popular vote). The mess of the 2000 election is reason enough to change the system. A neoconservative minority was allowed to storm the White House with a radical, unrepresentative agenda. (emphasis added)
Reading about the tyrannical unrepresentative agenda of the Neo-Con’s of 2006 and ’07 is almost comical in light of the progressive leftist Obama agenda of today.
Getting back to the electoral college. According to the 2000 Census the top 10* metropolitan areas in the United States contain nearly 30% of the nations population:
| Total for metropolitan areas of 5,000,000 or more | 75,874,152 | 84,064,274 | 10.8% | 29.9% |
| New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, N.Y., N.J., Conn., Pa. | 19,549,649 | 21,199,865 | 8.4 | 7.5 |
| Los Angeles-Riverside-Orange County, Calif. | 14,531,529 | 16,373,645 | 12.7 | 5.8 |
| Chicago-Gary-Kenosha, Ill., Ind., Wis. | 8,239,820 | 9,157,540 | 11.1 | 3.3 |
| Washington-Baltimore, D.C., Md., Va., W.Va. | 6,727,050 | 7,608,070 | 13.1 | 2.7 |
| San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, Calif. | 6,253,311 | 7,039,362 | 12.6 | 2.5 |
| Philadelphia-Wilmington-Atlantic City, Pa., N.J., Del., Md. | 5,892,937 | 6,188,463 | 5.0 | 2.2 |
| Boston-Worcester-Lawrence, Mass., N.H., Maine, Conn. | 5,455,403 | 5,819,100 | 6.7 | 2.1 |
| Detroit-Ann Arbor-Flint, Mich. | 5,187,171 | 5,456,428 | 5.2 | 1.9 |
| Dallas-Fort Worth, Tex. | 4,037,282 | 5,221,801 | 29.3 | 1.9 |
New York city and Los Angeles combined contain 13.3% of the nations population. For comparison, today, the ENTIRE states of New York and California control 86 (15.9% ) of the electoral college’s 538 electoral votes. If the United States moved to a popular vote, large metropolitan areas such as New York and LA will command more power and influence than entire states do today. Naturally, politicians will spend more time and pay more attention to these select areas and less to smaller cities and rural areas. How is this giving more voice to all the people in America?
Of course, this is what the progressive left wants.