There’s no particular reason to call it a backdoor or not the “right” way.

a "hack", or a "workaround" is more appropriate perhaps, rather than a backdoor.

It reminds me of technical debt. Instead of rewriting the original buggy code, we add one more feature and we certainly don't change anything to the original code.

So instead we have:

"This is the logic, we do this A and this B, but oh well, anyway it's C"

Simpler is better, especially on crucial things such as elections.

It is horrendously difficult to amend the constitution. We would need much greater societal consensus to be make it easier to amend the constitution.

Changing the presidental vote to a popular vote would be the first step to doing that.

Getting 75% of states to support something is simpler than getting 50% of electoral college votes to agree on supporting the more popular candidate? Constitutional amendments are anything but simple.

Amending the Constitution is a metaphysical impossibility at this point. The Electoral College exists to give outsized political power to rural states, and they aren't going to agree to give that up.

Isn't it what California and other states are doing with the NPVIC ? "Ok you don't want give up your power, and to amend the Constitution, so screw you, we will decide without you"

I used to think getting rid of the Electoral College was "obviously" the right thing.

Then I learned more about how the US works, and realized that the electoral college is actually its strength! Without it cities would completely dominate rural areas, like completely.

Those rural areas would essentially have zero voice. Think about it: do you want a US where only a couple states control the entire thing?

And I don't mean like today where some states are predictably red or blue (i.e. where only the swing states "count") - in the current state red vs blue alternate positions on capital hill, so all those states eventually get their voice heard.

In a world without the Electoral College the rural states get zero voice. None.

I don't think the US would survive this.

Why should someone in a rural area get a bigger say than someone in an urban one? California has more people than ~15 least populous states combined.

Also, all the rural red counties in CA effectively have no voice in the presidential election. It's a dumb, outdated, arbitrary system.

The Electoral College only affects the election of the President, who does not (despite popular misconception) actually run the government the way a CEO runs a country, rather he represents one of three equal and (ostensibly) separate branches of government. The Electoral College doesn't determine the distribution of representatives in Congress, nor the election of judges.

Obviously rural states would not cease to have a voice in government if the President were elected by popular vote - which is in essence what the Electoral College is designed to prevent - because most Presidents have been and yet rural states somehow persist, pass legislation and maintain political power.

> Think about it: do you want a US where only a couple states control the entire thing?

You mean like the US we have, where the entire race is focused on 7 states?