What’s the benefit of keeping the Electoral College? Hasn’t it outlived its usefulness?
This was debated to death late last year. 
Try a Search.
Also do note- it ain’t gonna happen.
Can’t search…don’t have a paid membership.
Scrapped or replaced with a nationwide system similar to Maine and Nebraska’s. I think those are the right two.
Well that problem is pretty easy to fix. 
In the interests of hospitality, I’ve dredged up several of the old threads on this topic (limited to threads begun to discuss the EC; does not include threads where the topic was dragged in, kicking and screaming, to make a point in support of or in opposition to a separate discussion):
Electoral college.
What’s the point of the Electoral College
Electoral College again
Freedom2 Explains the Advantages of the Electoral Collage
is there any reason to keep the electoral college?
Practical Plan to Abort Electoral College
Why no more talk about reforming the electoral college?
Why do states care who’s president?
How to make Colorado’s vote not matter - in one easy lesson
Will Colorado change how it names its presidential electors?
Faithless elector turns election topsy turvey
Now, having provided you with a couple of hours of light reading, I’d like to also make an observation about your posting.
This is the 14th thread you have begun in the last few days. However, despite the fact that most of them have been in the Great Debates Forum, and they do seem to be legitimate topics for discussion, you have not returned to any of those threads to participate in the actual discussions.
Now, there is no rule that says you must post in every (or any) thread that you begin, but it is generally considered a courteous act to actually participate in any discussion about which you felt curious enough to submit to the SDMB.
I am not ordering you to actually respond to your own threads, but, as I note, it is considered the courteous behavior on this message board.
I would also call your attention to the message to you from my senior associate, Gaudere, in this thread.
The short answer to your question is:
Of course the electoral college should be scrapped. But that would take a constitutional amendment.
That would require passage in the House and Senate, then ratification by 3/4 of all state legislatures. Since the small states believe they benefit from the electoral college, you will almost certainly find 13 or more small states that would refuse to ratify the constititutional amendment, and you’re stuck.
Of course, wasn’t the idea of the electoral college to benefit the smaller states?
It’s more that the electoral college was set up to be more like the selection of a prime minister rather than a direct election of a president. Each state would send electors…but the method of choosing the electors was left to the states. The electors could, for instance, be selected by the state legislatures rather than a statewide election. The main thrust wasn’t so much to benefit small states (although it did) as to preserve the sovereignity of the states. Although perhaps “preserving the sovereignity of the states” is another way to say “protecting the small states from the tyranny of majority rule by the large states”. The other point is that the president and vice president are the only national offices in the US. At the time the constitutution was written no one wanted to set up a national election process for two offices. So they essentially continued with state elections determining the electors, and the electors meeting to select the two national offices.
the subject has been discussed before—but now, after November, I have a feeling that a lot of people have change sides.
In the past, most people opposed to the electoral college were liberals.
Example: there was a New York Times editorial in August saying that the EC should be eliminated
link
After all, the electoral college screwed Al Gore out of his rightful win, since the popular vote went for Gore, not Bush, and we all want a system that reflects the popular vote, right?.
Now, I notice a strange silence coming from the NY Times.
They screamed after the Florida debacle in 2000 that it wasnt fair.But of all the arguments given the “morning after” about whether Kerry should demand a re-count, nobody among the Democrats mentioned the issue of fairness. It was all about the tactics,(whether there was a reasonable chance of finding 100,000 provisional ballots, whether the public would support a long drawn out court battle , etc)
I would love to know if the Times still stands by it’s well-reasoned editorial.
Scrap it…question bureaucracy and get rid of what is not needed. Gov’t is way too bloated.
Except this isn’t a question of bloat. Right now we have no national elections, just a series of state-wide elections. For popular election of the P and VP we’d need a national election board, or some sort of oversight of the state elections if we don’t want ballot-stuffing by states controlled by one party or another. That means more bloat, not less. Still worth doing, but we wouldn’t save money or reduce beauracracy.
I think most smart “liberals” still see the electoral system’s flaw…
I think its a way to easy to fraud system. Just get 10k votes here or there… and you’ve got a majority in close contests. That is way to dangerous for a nationwide election. Its a major flaw IMHO… and even if it was never used… the amount of “fraud” theories show that its not that unlikely to be true.