Stop gnashing your teeth over the EC. If we had a popular vote that wasn’t just a camouflage for tyranny of the majority, that vote could be lost by one vote, too. Talk about “winner take all”! The swing states are what makes the EC so effective. That HRC did not understand how to win is not the Framers’ fault; it’s her fault. Fixing the EC is not the answer. Running smarter is the answer. To carry the swing states, a candidate must address a very wide cross-section of interests, urban rural, white, non-white, jobs, healthcare, immigration, national security, EEO, etc.

A popular vote contest would actually take much of that off the table and be far more likely to lead to talk of secession by the states getting the short end of the stick in every national issue. The issue goes beyond the Presidential election. Think of the things a President can veto if he doesn’t need the votes of thinly populated states. Everything we do would skew toward the wishes of the population centers, which would foolishly screw over the ranchers and farmers until they struck back in ways we should not want to think about.

Better candidates and smarter voters would solve the EC problem. The structure is the least of our problems. On the contrary, people only complain about because it is doing its job of preventing the popular vote from being the only vote that matters.