These small communities being dictated to by big cities is something I'm familiar with, living so near southern Illinois, which has little to no power in statewide elections because of Chicago. But I'm not seeing as that being any less fair than the small towns and rural areas of Missouri having a proportionate amount of power over St. Louis and Kansas City.
But that is precisely why we have a hybrid system.
EITHER thing is unfair if applied in some kind of universal sense, so our system actually allows for instances where BOTH sides can exert their power.
On a STATE level, major population centers are given greater power. Why? Because a state is a pure majority rule entity. So there is a significant increase in the ability for individual population centers to swing the entire state. HOWEVER, due to the realities of the electoral college on a NATIONAL scale, there still presents incentive to reach out to those small communities throughout the country.
If you
JUST did things community by community, then it would give
WAY too much power to the small, disparate towns and small cities that cover this country.
If you
JUST did things by the pure individual, then it would give
WAY too much power to the major population grouping city centers that are spread across the edges of the country.
We've got a system that allows for a legitimate push and pull between them both. Does it lead to situations at times where one side or another feels disenfranchised? Yes, because peoples natural reaction to losing often times is to assume the system is just rigged against them. But in reality, it strikes a FAR better balance between the two.
Candidates would still hold rallies in small working towns, but instead of limiting them to competitive areas, they'd be able to hold them in states who's major cities and small towns alike are completely ignored under the current system. Because it is a little harder to reach some areas than it is cities, I'm sure there would be some disproportionate weight given to major cities, but I don't think it would outweigh the disenfranchisement under the current system.
Here we're just going to likely disagree. The cost/benefit logistics is just unrealistic to assume what you describe would actually happen. 14% of the population are not in a Metropolitan Statistical Area, meaning they're likely widely dispersed across locations. Sure, you could try to visit those places, but a cost/benefit notion it would be beyond foolish. Any given stop is going to net you what? Dozens to hundreds of potential voters if that? Yet it's taking travel expenses, travel time, and rally time. And because they're disparately spread across the country, going from one to another is incredibly inefficient. Especially when you take into account the population differences. A .05% shift in a place like the New York Metro area could garner you more votes than spread across multiple small towns, for likely a fraction of the time and cost of outreach.
I think, overall, this is a bigger problem than would be caused by going to the popular vote.
I understand your point here, but I simply disagree with your assertion that going with the straight popular vote would somehow actually make this less of a problem. These places aren't visited because the results are largely assumed, and I don't think that'd change in many ways. The population numbers are not enough that, by going to the popular vote, it would be incentive to spend a ton of time in these places, with perhaps the exception being California simply because of it's population size.
Not allowing a sovereign territory the right to decide how to wield its influence in electing the Chief Executive, does not seem right to me.
I don't have an issue with a state deciding how it wants to assign its electors. I may have issues if I was living there in terms of specifics, but I don't have an issue in theory. If they want it to go to their popular vote winner, fine. If they want it to go to the national popular vote winner, fine (I think that's incredibly disenfranchising for their own state, but they should be free to make that choice if they want). If they want to divide it by district, I'm fine with that. If they want to do it by percentage, I'm fine. I agree, states should decide how they wish to have their electors function. But I think the elector method should stay in place.
