Electoral college

In a nutshellWhen the electoral college (EC) and the national popular vote (NPV) produce the same outcome, EC is an unnecessary complication in the process. When outcomes differ, NPV's outcome is right and EC's outcome is wrong. Either way, you have a reason to choose NPV and none to choose EC.How to choose one system over anotherYou are choosing between policies. This calls for a well-reasoned justification that follows from the purpose of having a policy in the first place. Ruthlessly filter each of our arguments through the question: "does this persuade me that one policy fulfills its purpose better than the other policy?"You will find that NPV is justified by an uncontroversial principle and a coherent, mathematically valid argument, whereas EC is an unnecessary political compromise justified only by points that are fallacious individually and do not form a coherent argument collectively. And there is no way to derive EC from a solid theoretical foundation without doing incredible mental gymnastics.The purpose of the election is to ...... represent the will ...The purpose of any kind of election is to make a decision that represents the will of the voters. (To aggregate preferences, in more formal terms.) There is simply no other reason to have an election, except to deceive people by creating the illusion of democracy.The fairest, most obvious, and least arbitrary way to formalize "the will of the voters" is the criterion of majority rule: if over half the voters prefer option A over option B, then A should defeat B.Therefore, if NPV satisfies the criterion of majority rule when EC fails (over half of voters prefer A over B; NPV selects A over B; EC selects B over A), then you should choose NPV.... of the citizens.The difference between EC and NPV is:EC: voter = person ("elector") hired by state government to vote.NPV: voter = citizen.A system should count citizens, not hired electors, as voters.Citizens surrender their liberty to the government. In exchange, the government serves them. Why ask the citizens what they want, if not to legitimize the government's actions and to help it effectively fulfill its end of the social contract?On the other hand, there is no justification to represent the will of a few hundred state employees who were hired simply to vote. Pro might say "EC represents the will of the states themselves." If so, then why should states have electors proportional to their citizens? Because big states matter more than small states? Because issues are more important if they matter to more citizens? That is actually the intuitive idea that is formalized as majority rule. Therefore, by the same logic that justifies the design of EC, NPV is right and EC is wrong.When NPV and EC produce different results...In US history alone, it has happened 4 times, most recently in 2000 when Bush beat Gore.Simple example of how this can happen:States are X, Y, and Z; each state has 5 citizens and 1 elector; candidates are A and B.X: A A A A AY: A A B B BZ: A A B B BIn NPV, A wins 9-6. In EC, B wins 2-1 because Y and Z have their electors vote for B.Interestingly, political science textbooks use similar examples to illustrate gerrymandering.... NPV's result is right and EC's result is wrong.This is self-explanatory. The right result is the one that represents the will of the citizens. There is no reason to think that throwing away hundreds of millions of citizens' data points, and electing the president based on a smaller data set that only vaguely resembles the citizens' data set, represents the will of the citizens more accurately.Gerrymandering is a form of political corruption in which politicians creatively assign citizens to districts to win absurd victories that wildly contradict the will of the citizens. It defeats the purpose of democracy to divide citizens into groups for no purpose other than to change the outcome. What makes the electoral college any different?