The major shortcoming of the current system of electing the President is that presidential candidates concentrate their attention on a handful of closely divided "battleground" states. In 2004 two-thirds of the visits and money were focused in just six states; 88% on 9 states, and 99% of the money went to just 16 states. Two-thirds of the states and people were merely spectators to the presidential election. Candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or worry about the voter concerns in states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind. The reason for this is the winner-take-all rule enacted by 48 states, under which all of a state's electoral votes are awarded to the candidate who gets the most votes in each separate state.
Another shortcoming of the current system is that a candidate can win the Presidency without winning the most popular votes nationwide. This has occurred in one of every 14 presidential elections.
In the past six decades, there have been six presidential elections in which a shift of a relatively small number of votes in one or two states would have elected (and, of course, in 2000, did elect) a presidential candidate who lost the popular vote nationwide.
The system was never intended as a purely national system. The electoral college was never intended to be sensitive to the popular vote. It is a mix of federal/national.
As to the winner takes all aspect at the state level, it is a trade off between legitimacy and a winner having a large majority of electors and hearing the federal voices of the states.
The purely national component of the US system is the House. Same as the Senate is the purely federal component. The executive is intended as a democratic mix of the two. In that it succeeds.
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'Sworn to no party, and of no sect am I.' Frederick Vosper's republican motto.
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