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It may help voter turn out. There are many people that feel that their vote doesn't count based on the state in which they live.

Personally, I think that voter fraud would increase dramatically.

oh no need to even go over that...anyone who doesn't understand why we have the electoral college is a fricking retard

totally agree, but I think the possibility exists for a backfire. Regardless, to make it clear. I think the popular vote is a horrible, horrible idea and would lead to civil unrest of the violent kind as 45 states have a government that doesn't concern themselves with their needs, wants, etc. I'm not being dramatic, I think within a couple of decades we'd have civil war.

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Candidates would essentially campaign in like 5 cities and ignore the entire rest of the country.

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Clinton and Trump each got around 60million votes Tuesday.

the top 5 metro areas in this country alone have over 56 million people in them (obviously not all 56 million voted).

I favor the EC - and have always done so - because it requires candidates to pay attention to more parts of the country. I realize the results are uneven because even a massively important state such as California (55 electoral votes!) can end up being ignored because it's not a competitive state, but the alternative is a campaign focused only on metro areas. Good luck trying to find a candidate in a metro that doesn't have an NFL, MLB, or NBA team.

If we did get to a pure popular vote, I would actually look for voter fraud to decrease somewhat as it would be that much harder to achieve something important. Adding a few votes in Philly can swing PA, but it is unlikely to swing a national vote. Finally - and this is what many upset with any particular election result miss - you can't just say Hillary, or whoever, would have won if there was no EC. The campaigns would have been conducted so differently, you can't say how it would have turned out. It's like saying you don't like the 3-point shot, so you can safely say that Golden State would not have won the NBA title the year before last. Of course not! Golden State would have played differently if the shot was worth only 2.

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We have no idea who would have won if it was a straight popular vote

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that's what i'm saying. The common thought by everyone (including dems which is why they want it) is that they'd win every single election

i'm not convinced of that. I don't know how it would go, but I suspect that like you said, it could go either way and generally speaking the macro results would be pretty much the same...but i'm just saying it's a possibility. We don't use it for many reasons, many really fricking good reasons.

The issue I have with the EC is the way the votes are distributed. We all know the the EC basically goes by census numbers. The census counts every person. Persons counted in the census include citizens, legal immigrants, non-citizen long-term visitors and illegal (or undocumented) immigrants. Not counting illegal aliens costs cities and states federal money, resulting in a reduction of services to all residents.

According to ruff numbers from the election results, around 8.5 million people voted in California. New York had roughly 7.9 million voters. But California gets 55 EV vs New York only 29 EV. So a vote in California is worth more than a vote in New York.

I know HRC won both states, but how many other states reflect higher voter turn out with less EV.

I just think it should be off registered voters and not off the census. I am one of those people that thinks if you didn't vote, your opinion doesn't matter. Going off the census for EV's gives people who didn't or can't vote a say in the election.

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Agreed you can't just look at the current vote totals and think that would happen if the method was the popular vote.

In fact, we have no idea who doesnt vote now because they feel it's pointless. It would be the same situation in states like LA and TX as it would be in NYC and Chicago.

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Not to mention that candidates would campaign differently. I don think Trump or Hillary spent any time in CA because they knew which way it was going. Given the large population they would have both spent a considerable amount of time there under a popular vote system and much less time in some other state.

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Voter turnout in countless areas would change without the EC. We have no idea who would have won if it was a straight popular vote.

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True, but since there were more (or at least believed to be more) battleground states this year, this would probably be closer to the popular vote outcome than in most recent elections.