The poster you responded to referenced gerrymandering. I believe in that person's view, the gerrymandering is a form of corruption. Surely you believe corruption would result in an unfair election result. Though I would understand if you did not believe that gerrymandering is corruption.

http://www.npr.org/2016/06/15/482150951/understanding-congre...

The electoral college is basically not gerrymandered. In all but two states, everyone in the state is voting in the same electoral college "district" - i.e., the state - and the boundaries of the states were established sufficiently long ago (1912 []) that we can assume they were not deliberately designed to produce a certain electoral outcome today.

[] Two states have been admitted since 1912 - Alaska and Hawaii - but their borders match preexisting borders (the Alaska-Canada border was last altered in 1903).

The college itself is gerrymandering. It was set up to roughly represent population but to have an educated stop gap against a populist winning. With urbanization and different population growth it is now a system of disproportionate representation.

The people who drew state lines hundreds of years ago had no idea what things were going to look like in 2017; that's just stupid. Gerrymandering is drawing district lines to get a certain outcome. The state borders were not drawn to get a certain electoral outcome, they were drawn because of various political and geographic factors that existed in the 1700s. They didn't even have political parties at the time, nor did they even have a country in the eastern seaboard "states", since those were just independent colonies of England and there was no unification whatsoever. The whole "states" thing and unified federal country didn't come around until much later (the colonies were established in the 1600s, the revolution was in 1776).

You know how 10% of counties win elections (see 2008, 2012)? The electoral college is there so that number doesn't become 2%.

First of all, I don't understand how the removal of the electoral college would cause an individual within a certain county to have more voting power, rather than less (wouldn't this be the case? Their "vote" would be equal to any of the other millions of Americans anywhere ? )

Second, I don't understand how in a "no electoral college" universe, the concept of a "county" is even relevant. With every vote being perfectly equal, one would think the balance of power would perfectly equalize across all voters.

The college produces different outcomes than a popular vote - that's true. I also don't think it's a good thing. But gerrymandering is something specific: drawing electoral districts to deliberately produce certain electoral outcomes. It presupposes a system with districts, but is not the same thing.

Thank you for pointing this out. I was not thinking about it at the time and I will remember it for next time.