Kudos to U.S. Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) who has proposed a sweeping overhaul of the primary and general election process for president. The senator proposes to replace the current crap primary system with a system of rotating regional elections. This plan would give no permanent "order" advantage to any one state or region--every four years, another region would go first. Brilliant. Good idea.Unfortunately, the senator also argues for abolishing the Electoral College and going to a direct popular election of the president. This, he correctly argues, would avoid the scenario of a candidate getting more popular votes and losing the presidency—as has happened four times in our history (most recently in 2000). Not so brilliant. Bad idea. No biscuit, Senator.
Here's why. While direct popular election sounds like a good idea, it gives way too much weight to what the Founding Fathers would have lovingly called "The Mob" (no, nothing to do with Tony Soprano). The Electoral College was instituted to protect smaller states from the over-dominance of the larger states—due to their bigger populations. So, in a direct popular plan, California, by virtue of its far greater numbers would blow away Rhode Island in overall influence on the election.
The better solution is for the Electoral College to adopt the plan that works so miserably for the Democratic nomination process, but would be perfect for a national election—proportional representation. That is, if Senator Obama (who will be the Democratic Party nominee, let's face it) gets 60% of the popular vote in Maryland, he would get 60% of the state's Electoral votes (6 out of 10). McCain, conversely, would get the remaining four. This is a far better and fairer way of apportioning electoral votes than the current system, which, in this hypothetical example, would award all 10 of Maryland's votes to Obama.
So, Senator Nelson, you were half-right. Which, frankly, is better than about 99 other senators.