Why aren't electoral college votes awarded proportionally?
As you should know, come the general election, each candidate will be awarded electoral votes in every state based on a winner-take-all, single member district plurality system. I argue that this is not truly representative, and is undemocratic. If electoral votes were awarded on a proportional basis, we could presumably avoid presidents who have not won the popular vote, a la John Q. Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, Benjamin Harrison, and most notably (because we were alive to care) George W. Bush. It is for this reason I argue that the electoral college system should adjusted to be awarded proportionally.
So, my question is, why ISN'T it? My Political Parties and Voting professor asserts that it was because it didn't occur the founders at the time of the scripting of the Constitution, but he was unsure. Is there anyone that can confirm this, or who knows otherwise?
And also if you disagree with my idea, why?
Or, preferably, if you agree, will you send letters to your congressmen?
Everyone has made good points so far but a few things have stricken me.
A lot of you seem to think that to proportionalize the electoral college would alienate the small states. I argue the opposite, because, as it is, voters in small states actually carry more weight, especially if their state is a swing state.
In the proposed method, every state is essentially a swing state.
As it is, most campaigns already only take place in the big states like NY and CA. If it was distributed proportionally, candidates would be forced to campaign in ALL states, because it wouldn't be insured that they'd get all of the votes from each state by winning with a 51% majority, or in the case of Gore and CA in 200, 53%.
Also, I'm fully aware that America is a Republic, or more accurately, a Representative Democracy. But as it is, everyone who votes against the way their state as a whole goes goes unrepresented.
Additionally, I am not proposing to abolish the electoral college. I'm all too aware of what kind of disastrous effects that would have on the democratic process of this country. The only time I can think of when that might have been a good idea is near the founding (or maybe around 1820, as my favorite president proposed) when the population was small, but Aaron Burr has convinced me otherwise.
And lastly, at the user who says that Bush would still have won: learn your facts. Gore would have won by 8 points, where Bush won by only 5 in the actual election.