Given that electoral college votes for a state equal its number of representatives plus 2 (for a state's senators), with the former distributed proportionate to population, your suggestion is almost equivalent to "first past the post" on a country-wide basis. Which, by your argument, would "effectively disenfranchise the votes of the minority".

Or, alternatively, elections could be run by an independent body as is the case you most other western democracies. Really, one shouldn't have to change the manner in which a President is selected to rid the process of the kind of shenanigans that saw Bush elected in 2000.

The key being seatS, as opposed to ultimately a single individual. So that doesn't make it a good comparison point.

And instead of complaining about "disenfranchised voters" etc, maybe the Republicans should modify their policies to make themselves competitive in California, instead of a complete pariah?

The Republicans used to love the electoral college. But then the Democrats figured out how to win Virginia, Florida and Ohio, and suddenly now the GOP would like to "fix" it.

The Republicans attack Hispanics, then are astonished that some of those Hispanics vote.

In California’s 2012 Presidential vote, 60% of the vote went to Obama and 37% to Romney. Under my suggestion, Obama would have received 33 electoral votes and Romney 22. As I see it, no one would have been effectively disenfranchised, each side receiving the number of electors in proportion to the vote the candidate received. In smaller states such as Wyoming, some other formula would have to be worked out, where Wyoming has 3 electors, two for the Senators and one for their single Representative.

Without going into the “shenanigans” that got Bush elected, I would point out that the NYT concluded he beat Gore by 547 votes in Florida, which got him elected. Gore probably lost because of the Nader vote (97,000 left wing votes in Florida) and/or the Buchanan vote, which probably cost Gore 3,700 votes in Palm Beach County where the butterfly ballot apparently confused that many elderly Jewish voters, to whom Buchanan was anathema, but they still apparently voted for him. I am old enough to remember the 1960 election cliffhanger that was decided when Chicago “found” some 20,000 votes that flipped Illinois to Kennedy, and where Lyndon Johnson’s people found enough votes, hours after the polls closed, to deliver Texas to Kennedy as well.

As far as California Republicans modifying their policies, are you suggesting they try to out-pander the Democrats? Not possible. Buy blocs of votes by using the public purse? Open the borders to millions of people, 85% of whom they know will never vote for them because they won’t outbid the Democrats? That’s probably not going to happen, so they will have to content themselves with being pariahs.

Why is a "first past the post" election on a state by state basis more "disenfranchising" than a "first past the post" election of a national basis (which is what you're effectively suggesting)?

Of course, the answer is "neither are disenfranchising at all".

And as I pointed out before, there are solid reasons who the current fptp system has advantages.

Ultimately justices appointed by Republican presidents outvoted those appointed by Democratic ones. I call that shenanigans, especially given the actions of Katherine Harris.

Two studies that concluded Gore won Florida:

Florida 'recounts' make Gore winner | World news | The Guardian

The bottom line is we'll never know one way or another.

How many strawmen would you like to stuff in a paragraph??

Here are a couple of clues: maybe calling Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists isn't going to get Hispanics to vote for you? And maybe associating homosexuality with bestiality isn't going to get gays (or a lot of other rational people) to vote for you? Oh, and those two comments are from the two Republican primary candidates ahead in the polls.

Perhaps Justices can't get past their party allegiances. SCOTUS normally votes along party lines, with one guy in the middle flipping one way or the other. Probably happened in 2000. Same thing happened with the Florida Supremes, who also cast their opinions along party lines in the 2000 debacle. I agree, we'll probably never definitively know what happened in Florida. But surely, if Nader hadn't been around and Palm Beach hadn't used butterfly ballots, algore would have been our President, for better or worse.

I admit I tried to stuff as many points (you could think of them as strawmen, if you wish) into as short a paragraph as possible. As for what The Donald and The Brain Surgeon say about Mexicans and gays, well, that's not California's Republican Party. Anyway, my guys are Bernie on the Dem side and Fiorina on the Rep side - neither of them would say such stupid stuff.

I thought we were talking about California's Republican state party modifying its platform to shed what you see as its pariah status; and I'm suggesting it's not in their makeup, for the solid reasons I suggested. Essentially they would have to get to the left of the Democratic Party, and how hard would that be in California?

It's both telling and comedic that not behaving like an overt dumb bigot is considered by many Republicans as "leftist."

Bigotry is a function of ignorance and/or a desperate attempt to consider oneself better than "the other" and has nothing to do with political persuasion.

When we first moved to the States from Alberta we lived in a section of Newburgh, NY that had Italians on one side of the street and blacks on the other (I had never laid eyes on a black person before that move). Both sides were dirt poor, all were Democrats, and the Italian side looked down on the blacks. They constantly said bigoted things about the blacks (they used the "N" word back then); and I'm sure it was instilled into the kids, most of whom are undoubtedly adult Democrats now. Fortunately my parents moved us to Pennsylvania after six months.

If the Democratic party had been saying nasty things about your nationality or race and tried to demonize you for it, then you'd have a point. But they weren't, so you don't.

Trump and Carson are way ahead of the rest in the latest poll for the California primary. So it's perfectly valid to use their views to illustrate why Republicans are out of touch with the California electorate as a whole.

We were talking about your claim that Republican voters in the California primary are "effectively disenfranchised". So this isn't about the Californian Republican party modifying its platform - after all, Republicans have won state-wide elections including Governor - it's about the Republican Party nationally having candidates who aren't pariahs. Really, this has nothing to do with "get to the left of the Democratic Party", it's about having candidates who don't spew hatred on social issues and have rational policies not driven by the Tea Party crowd. In other words, like the Republican party of, say, 30 years ago.

You have to go further back then that. The Southern Strategy that was intended to capture white voters began with Nixon, and Reagan made those intentions clear when he began his 1980 election effort in Philadelphia, MS, a place made famous by the killing of three civil rights workers.

Wherever Newt Gingrich is these days you have to think he must be kicking himself that he didn't wait another four years. He could have had his moon base after all.

Oh and the way CNN have been hyping the debate tomorrow, I'm surprised it's not set in a steel cage with Hulk Hogan as the moderator.

Now that I might watch.

Or maybe if we can get Tina turner to say "ten men enter, one man leaves"?

Thanks for bringing her into the picture.

Two songs Tina could sing about the guy with the squirrel on his head: "Break Every Rule," and "Typical Male."

For the Low Energy Guy: "I Don't Wanna Fight."

For the Randist: "We Don't Need Another Hero."

For Fiorina the Fierce: "Simply the Best."

For The Preacher: "Steamy Windows."

Finally, for the Guy Who Wears Specs to Look Smart: "When the Heartache is Over."

Sing your heart out, Tina! - my favorite: "River Deep, Mountain High" probably doesn't apply to anyone applying for Obama's job on either side of the aisle.

The entire purpose of a written Constitution is to be self-contained, which is why it is considered to be the Supreme Law of the land. Which is why it says so in Article 6.

I have read the Federalist papers actually but strangely no I can't recall them all at any given moment. Neither can you frankly, Mr. Google.

I'm fully aware of how the electoral college came about but what I said was totally accurate - nowhere in the Constitution does it say the President represents the States. The Federalist Papers in that section talk about the "favor" of State governments and "without the intervention of", these are safeguards that are being talked about to stop power from being too centralized in one person, but that person represents the people, not the States directly. Or "the people" as they were narrowly described at the time.

The purpose of a Federal Government is to decentralize power. The President doesn't directly represent the States anymore than the Queen represents the provinces. The President isn't beholden to the States in a formal way dictated by the Constitution.

Look at how hard it was for Texas to get standing to try and stop DAPA for example. Read the case law on that one. That is in fact the main point of the DoJ's appeal at this point, that Texas lacks standing.

And anyway, it's not as if the Federalist papers were the final word, there have been 27 amendments and a Civil War since.

Oh you mean that thing called the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights 1689 which the Founding Fathers plagiarized and then chucked in some stuff they stole from John Locke?

Strangely yes I am familiar with it because I live in a part of North America that still has them.

Personally I think they should go back to Mexico. I'm still waiting for the US to go bankrupt so Canada can annex the nice bits.