The Electoral College: Much more than an anachronism

First, a little bit of civics:

The Presidential Election is actually an amalgam of 50 separate elections held in each one of the United States. In these State-level elections, the winner is chosen by popular vote, which in turn allocates a certain number of Electors, who then go on to vote in the national election, which takes place in something called the Electoral College. The Electors are awarded based on the popular election, which is held simultaneously in each State on the first Tuesday in November. The Electors in the Electoral College then conduct their vote in mid December.

In 48 of the 50 States, Electors are awarded in a “first past the post” system, which is to say the candidate who wins the plurality of the popular vote is awarded ALL of the Electors from that State (Nebraska and Maine award Electors proportionately). The number of Electors in each State is based on the number of Representatives that the State sends to the House of Representatives, plus the two Senators that the State sends to the Senate. The District of Columbia (a.k.a. Washington, DC), while not an actual State, also has 3 Electors that participate in the presidential elections.

The reason that the US has such an arcane and unusual system stems from America’s origins as a slave-holding country. When the United States was founded, the center of economic and thus political power resided in the slave-holding colonies of the South. Two thirds of the wealth of the original American colonies was…