arensb

Or we can just implement a wealth tax like any reasonable nation.

Yeah, the problem here is the implementation: you and I and most people here would benefit a little from a higher tax on billionaires, enough to motivate us to send a letter to our Congressional representatives and send a few bucks to whichever campaigning politicians promise to do it.

Billionaires, in the meantime, stand to lose millions, or even tens of millions of dollars. Enough that it makes sense for them to start PACs, schmooze, and even bribe the Congressional representatives who'd be in charge of raising taxes. So even though there are hundreds of them and millions of us, they have greater means and motivation.

Unless I'm mistaken, a regent is someone appointed to rule temporarily, e.g., if the rightful king or queen is still a child, a regent can be appointed to rule until they grow up.

Maybe a non-binary ruler can be "Emperox"?

Oh, wait. You’re serious. Let me laugh even harder.

That's not even it. At the time the Constitution was adopted, there were states like Virginia that had a lot of people, but rather few voters. They were afraid that they wouldn't have a real say in who the president was. The Electoral College was a way to inflate slave states' power, and entice them to join the Union.

Reminds me of the Blackadder episode where Baldrick won by 16,000 votes, even though there was only one voter:

H: One voter, 16,472 votes — a slight anomaly…?

E: Not really, Mr. Hanna. You see, Baldrick may look like a monkey who’s been put in a suit and then strategically shaved, but he is a brillant politician. The number of votes I cast is simply a reflection of how firmly I believe in his policies.

Part of that is due to the feeling that one's vote doesn't matter. IMO having the president be elected by popular vote would bring a lot more people to the polls.

Mostly. Yes, RCV tends to elect compromise candidates, ones who may not be anyone's first choice, but that most people can live with. I think Joe Biden is a good example of this. Everyone was rah-rah for some else during the primaries: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee... but Joe Biden has broad tepid appeal.

How do you do that without violating the First Amendment right to freedom of association?

As it stands, there’s this notion that a candidate has to try and have broad appeal; they need to spread their campaign out a bit in order to “capture” the electoral votes of a state.

That's currently not the case: in most states, the vote isn't close, so we know before the campaign even begins how most states will vote. There's no reason for Republicans to appeal to Kansans, because Kansas will vote R no matter what. Likewise, there's no point for Democrats to appeal to Kansans because it won't do them any good.

Sans the electoral college, I see presidential campaigns becoming even more polarized and exclusionary. The Democrat campaign will become the “big city loop.” Continually visit Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, NYC, and Miami.

There's a word in politics for a candidate who wins in big cities, and nowhere else: "loser".

Check the demographics. Get a list of the 20 biggest cities in the US and add them up. You'll see that's only about 30% of the vote. So even if you somehow managed to get everyone in the big cities to vote for you, including children under 18, felons, and people on student visas, that still wouldn't be enough to determine the election.

Maybe they slide in a few secondary metros if it’s convenient. The candidate won’t have to worry about any non-urban messaging, and if they’re particularly incendiary could even preach “dumping those hicks in the sticks.”

Just in passing, there are more Republicans in the California sticks than the total population of several other states. If the president were elected by popular vote, candidates could no more ignore those voters than California gubernatorial candidates can, today.

Fun bit of trivia: which state had the most Republican voters in the 2020 election? Answer: California had more R votes than Texas or Florida or any deep-red state. But neither party gave a shit what California Republicans wanted: Democrats knew that the Electoral votes would go for Biden no matter what, so they didn't need to campaign there or court anyone's vote. And Republicans knew that there was no way to get even one of those Electoral votes, so their time and money was best spent campaigning elsewhere.

No, but a Kansan's vote should have the same weight as a New Yorker's or Californian's, or even a Pennsylvanian or Michigander. Not all Kansans vote the same way, and it would be nice to have a system that recognizes this.

And so, neither party is going to bother trying to court your vote: one can take you for granted, and the other will write you off. So I hope you have the same concerns as Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Arizona, because that's what you're getting.