Let's not even talk about the Senate where 500k people get the same amount of votes as 50 million. Yes, the founding fathers goal to not let rural areas be unrepresented was achieved at the expense of making the most populous areas underrepresented. So now instead of majority rule dominating minorities, minority rule dominates the majority. Brilliant! What could possibly go wrong? /s
In terms of the electoral college, perhaps something similar could be done. Not sure how though.
The things you probably find crazy: Gun ownership, owning trucks, large houses, etc. we find essential.
It's a big country, with different needs for different people. The day we trash the electoral college is the day we destroy America.
Of these, only gun ownership even has remote relevance to Federal politics, and none of them are actually essential, or even exclusive to rural residents to begin with.
This is why the electoral college is so very important. Without it, politicians would quickly shift even more focus to populous areas, to the detriment of the rest of the country.
I mean, the two party process gave you a choice between a millionaire from New York with at least a tenuous cultural connection to rural America, and a billionaire from New York with none, and judging from your former comments, you seem to have voted for the billionaire, and then the electoral college decided whether or not your vote mattered, and chose Kang over Kodos on your behalf. Luckily for you, your state agreed with your vote. But if you happen to be of the wrong party in some states, thanks to the electoral college, your vote simply ceases to matter.
I don't think the electoral college is giving you the leverage against urban cultural power you seem to think it does.
This is a crazy over-reaction.
The electoral college is a stupid mistake of history, that doesn't do anything positive but does undermine faith in our political system by making the loser win occasionally.
Getting rid of it won't do anything but increase stability a bit
I'm of the opinion that high voter participation is critically important because if you're not voting, you're not being represented, and if you're not being represented, those who are will benefit (likely) at your expense. In the U.S. however, people are understandably unenthusiastic about voting, because it almost doesn't matter.
Imagine what would have happened in 2016 if we had ranked choice voting and Bernie ran as an independent. Many on the left would have been energized to actually vote because they could vote for the candidate they actually wanted (Bernie), but would have been able to say "well if Bernie doesn't win, I guess Hillary is better than Trump". Bernie wouldn't have won, but neither would Trump. More importantly, though, those that supported Bernie would have been represented. You could point to the actual election results and see that X% of voters supported Bernie's ideas above the other candidates'.
The problem with the U.S. is that we don't get to vote for the best candidate, we get to vote for the least worst.
And don't get me started on the over-representation of low population states in the senate and electoral college.