Ray: You refer to Bill Clinton winning due to having the most Electoral College votes, but you seem to forget that he also had more direct votes than anyone! So, he would have won anyway, without the EC.
However, you don’t seem to understand the main point in my post, namely the high cost of the Electoral College, due to which we got both George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump into office way over their heads and education. Books have been written about all the damage those administrations caused, so I’ll only mention the unnecessary, unwinnable, and extremely costly wars caused by Bush, and the horrible example Trump set, destroying the world respect that President Obama restored after Bush, kissing up to Putin, and surrounding himself with criminals and incompetents. I could go on and on. Instead, take a look at my previous posts as a history lesson.
Finally, I don’t grasp the logic behind the thought that a democracy would be better off if a minority elects the president, instead of the majority! The smaller states are already favored by having as many senators as the larger, while their House representation reflects their population.

Let me add, that we may never know how much Putin was emboldened by Trump, who so foolishly kissed up to and praised him, nor will we ever know how much more difficult Trump made it for Ukraine by his childish, selfish, and utterly unpresidential actions against that country and its president, – all because of the EC.
Finally, how fair is it in a democracy, that Republican votes in blue states are discarded whenever a Democrat wins the presidency because of the EC, or for Democrats in red states to be ignored if a Republican wins the presidency, only due to the EC, like in the 2000, 2004 and 2016 “elections”?

On November 14, 2018, you published in “The Progressive Opinion Express” the following… “About time to abolish the outdated Electoral College and let the majority decide, which means that every vote counts equally.” The type of winner-takes-all elections you are promoting are known as First Past the Post (FPTP) voting. While you claim such elections will let the majority decide who will be elected, it wouldn’t quite work out that way. Your FPTP formula of 50% + 1 could lead to some very undemocratic results.

Two problems…

First, a winner takes all scenario can lead to our president routinely being elected with a plurality. When a candidate wins with a plurality, he or she wins with a minority of votes cast, and that smaller number of voters controls the majority. That’s exactly what happened when Bill Clinton was first elected. He received 43% of all votes cast for president. That means more Americans voted for someone other than Bill Clinton, but he still won. Wait, what?! How did that happen? Easy… Bill Clinton won the Electoral College vote. FPTP elections may lead to more candidates running for presidents and at the same time it can lead to more presidents being elected with a plurality. The problem with elections decided by results based on pluralities is that the president would not have a mandate to press forward with his or her particular vision for America.

Secondly, a winner takes all scenario can lead to a successful candidate’s party establishing itself as the dominant political party. With a single party system in place, voting for a candidate from any other party would be pointless. Why? Well, the FPTP system can essentially reward one political party with control over the entire government, and that can be a recipe for disaster. Do we have one party rule anywhere? Just look at the supermajority veto proof single party system in place in California. In 2018, in response to your earlier call to abolish the Electoral College, I asked how will the Democrats single party rule deal with huge increases in poverty, low performing schools, crumbling infrastructure, high gas prices, and high taxes. Since then, how have they done? A reasonable conclusion could be they have not very well. Those same issues were at the heart of a recall election just over four months ago.

I think we can agree that the Electoral College is not perfect. Yet, it does provide a way that voters in all states can have a say in the outcome of presidential elections.