Another Day, Another Useless Argument about the Electoral College

A friend keeps sending me articles defending the Electoral College, this one in the blue state LA Times.

Meanwhile, other friends keep sending me their ideas to bypass the Electoral College.

My reply:

"Our constitutional system wasn’t designed for this dysfunction."

Nonsense.  It was re-designed by slaves states precisely for this kind of dysfunction.  Madison had proposed a popularly elected President.  It wasn't that he was so fond of Democracy, but it would have balanced out the whole system which lacks democracy elsewhere.  There had to be, or should have been, one place where popular coalitions of the entire nation would compete against institutional forces which bend towards power and wealth under the current system which was re-designed to offer only local "democracy" if that.

That being said, it's hardly the only problem now, and it's essentially impossible to change because the mechanism of change has identical anti-democratic features, and therefore futile to think much about (though many of my friends still do).  It's an impediment to useful change but not a barrier if there were better organized popular forces.

Reforming campaign finance and dismantling systems of information monopoly and control offer more attainable opportunities at this point.  "Electoral College" arguments are a distraction which only causes further alienation.  The only scenario in which the Electoral College can be eliminated OR bypassed would be after small state bias has paused or ceased to have a significant effect.

The author goes on to say the EC "was intended to foster stability and compromise, while protecting the rights of political minorities and, crucially, individual liberty."  

No, it was intended to preserve states rights to continue chattel slavery and/or other ways of suppressing minority civil rights, and crucially, the sense of any common good at the national level or beyond.