The problem is how to get to there from here. I'm not sure that the Constitutional Convention is possible. The national popular vote might be possible. The e

The problem is how to get to there from here. I'm not sure that the Constitutional Convention is possible. The national popular vote might be possible. The electoral college was originally put in place to protect states' regional interests (via the extra two electoral votes per state). But the impact of those two votes was supposed to degrade over time, as the House (one EV per rep) was supposed to continue growing as population grew. If that had been allowed to continue growing, the Electoral College results would be virtually identical to the national popular vote by now. (Gore's EV total would have exceeded Bush's, for example.) If you get enough states to say they'll award their EVs to the national popular vote winner, as soon as 270 EVs worth of states agree to the same thing, then blammo - the Electoral College (as we know it) is kaput. Once a national popular vote is in place, it would be easier to start considering things like national proportional representation, rather than the plurality system we have now. As it is, the electoral college kind of bakes plurality into the system. One thing I'm still not sure of though - does proportional representation really improve anything? Wouldn't it basically result in political battles that would otherwise be settled in the primaries? You could basically look at the Tea Party and the Republicans as a ruling coalition in the house right now, and the battles between those two factions look pretty ridiculous. In proportional representation, it'd just mean there might be more of them (due to the spoiler effect of Democrats defeating Tea Party candidates after Tea Party candidates beat Republicans in primaries). There's also a reflexive bias towards IRV in the analysis. Ranked ballots are great, but that counting system is more trouble than it's worth.