A few weeks ago, I read about some Stanford professor's idea for how to ensure that the winner of the popular vote gets elected president. If a few states (only 11 would be needed if the big states signed on) agreed to give their electoral votes to the national winner of the popular vote, they could essentially bypass the electoral college system.

From the article: "Proponents say Koza's proposal is ingenious because it would avoid the immensely difficult task of trying to get rid of the Electoral College system by amending the U.S. Constitution."

You'd think recent experience with the Bush administration blocking investigations into it's own violations of our Constitutional rights would have taught us that routing around the Constitution is not a good idea. Even if this plan were a good idea (I'll get to that in a minute), it sets a very bad precedent. I would hope that the 11 biggest states wouldn't all join on, but if they do, essentially, they've overthrown the intent of the Constitution with far less than the supermajority that the amendment process requires. The entire middle of the country, and the minorities (rural residents) that live in them could be pretty well disenfranchised.

Anyway, here's one big problem with the plan. What if the national vote is close? It's ban enough when one state or a few has to recount all of their ballots, and when lawsuits have to be fought in those few states over the recounts. Can you imagine a national recount? Can you imagine the lawsuits? Can you imagine the recounts of the recounts of the recounts, each time somebody finds a flaw in the last recount?

And another problem: what if some states decide they're happy with the way their count turned out and refuse to recount? What if their recount would have changed the results? What if one party has better luck at getting recounts done in areas where it's to their advantage than others?

If you don't like the electoral system, if you don't like the comprimise between equal representation (the senate) and proportional representation (the house of representatives) that our founding fathers worked out, please at least respect the amendement system that they created if you're going to change it.