I believe that the writers of the US Consitution had their hearts in the right place. Democracy does tend to work best when fewer people, like less than 2000, are involved. This has been observed since antiquity. And when you concentrate so much power in the presidency, it has great potential to result in really ugly partisan campaigns. (IMO, 2012's campaign could get very ugly with very manipulative and uninformative campaigns in swing-states and lots of frustration in the rest of the states. ) So even if the writers of the US Constitution meant well, they didn't necessarily have the right tools at the time to accomplish their purposes and they tried out ideas, like having the second place candidate be the Vice President, that obviously were not well thought out.
But does that mean we should scrap the electoral college altogether?
I don't think so. It could be revamped. I described and illustrated my thoughts on this at my main blog, A New Kind of Third Party.
The basics:
(1) use the state primaries to determine seven finalists or six finalists plus an incumben eligible for reelection. This would make it so that the state primaries would go on for a longer time and so more of them would matter.
(2) Make the "general election" into an "open primary" where everyone has to pick their three favorites from the seven candidates. This could be done by listing out the 35 possible ways to pick three of seven candidates in alphabetical order. The three candidates who get the most votes in this manner would go on to the second stage at the electoral college.
(3) Pick 3 electors from each of the 435 congressional districts using the same election rule. Anyone eligible would merely have to gather fifty distinct valid signatures from potential voters to be considered as an elector. Of the umpteen interested potential electors, seven could be randomly selected in a lottery. This would be done in the month before the election. They would then have to be given unpaid time off from work, during which time they'd be given a modest salary stipend (perhaps, equal to the median for their geographic locale) and a modest budget for their campaign. They would be prohibited from spending their own money for the campaign or accepting donations. In this way, our most important and only national election would also become a local election. It would stimulate more discussion of how the presidential issues affect local issues. It would also increase the importance of local newspapers or blogs relative to the mainstream media and national blogs(including Daily Kos or TPM or Michelle Malkin).
(4)The day before the general primary election, all elector-candidates would have to be sequestered. After the three electors per district are identified, they would be transported to one secure location where they would be sheltered from outside influences. This could be done in a manner not unlike the papal conclave that picks the next pope. They would be blocked from receiving any communications from the outside world. (And their finances and overall spending would be monitored for the next couple years or so...)
(5) Initially, the 1305 electors would get to know each other and discuss the issues and candidates together, perhaps primarily in 121 groups of ten or eleven electors each.
(6) Within a week of the general primary, a subset of the electors would get to meet with the three finalists and discuss specific issues and report back to the rest of the electors. Then, they would all get to listen live to a final debate among the three finalists that would also be broadcast to the world.
(7) Immediately after the debate, the electors would determine the next president of the USA. This could be done by voting until one of the candidates has a majority of the votes or each elector could specify their first and second choice among the finalists and an instant runoff would be used.
(8)Then, the electors would go back to their normal lives, when they could blog about the experience.
(9) Instead of picking a Veep during the election, we could go back to something closer to the rule in the constitution where the second place candidate would become the Veep. Prior to the electoral college, the three finalists could designate which of the other six presidential candidates they would pick as their Veep. They would be allowed to pick one of the other three finalists.
This would make the presidential election a winner-doesn't-take-all election. There would no longer be strong incentives to attack your opponents, especially since they might make you their Veep. It'd be harder to determine who'd be the key swing-voters in such an election and so there'd be more attention to lots of people's issues and less nice-sounding but meaningless slogans. And it'd be impossible for the Radical Right to elect one of their own as president!
This is why I think we need to consider revamping our electoral college system to make our most important election a better election that will never elect not-so-qualified candidates, like Jimmy Carter and George W Bush.
dlw