> Elections would just switch from swing states to appealing to California and Texas if we did everything with purely popular votes.

I don't see why that would be the case. To win an election you don't need to win states at all; you need to win lots of voters, and those voters could come from anywhere.

You could lose every single voter in both CA and TX and still win the election, given different political demographics across states.

As an aside, I also think abolishing the Electoral College and going strictly by the national popular vote would increase voter turnout for presidential elections. I live in a solidly blue state, and if I didn't care about down-ballot races, I probably wouldn't bother to vote in presidential elections, since my vote doesn't really matter here. Only votes in swing states matter under the current system.

ya so instead we get multiple lifetimes of minority rule and stagnation.

Minority forces of change also happen for the good as well. There aren't too many landmark cases where the majority suddenly voted to give more representation, more power to workers, nor simply cede powers previously enjoyed by government.

> tyranny of the majority

Aka democracy.

> Elections would just switch from swing states to appealing to California and Texas if we did everything with purely popular votes.

No, it wouldn’t. It would switch to appealing to the most voters, who may or may not happen to live in California and Texas, but that is irrelevant to a democracy.

>Aka democracy.

Yes. I hope I don't need to explain the many times that the majority sentiment was in fact not the correct one. A pure democracy under the basis the US was founded under would end up much more conservative than what we have today.

> It would switch to appealing to the most voters.

So it'd switch to appealing to urban cities and ignore the rural areas. Iirc the top 10 cities today make up some 40+% of voters. Why bother going to Omaha when you can focus instead of LA and NYC?

Tyranny of the majority may be undesirable but tyranny of the minority is even worse. At least the majority, are, you know, the majority.

You are taking a very narrow one sided view. We live in a Republic of states, not a Federal Democracy. I know you would like this to happen, but it won't here for good reasons.

There is no “good” reason. It just so happens to be the way the power dynamics of the past have played out, and there has not yet been sufficient motivation for the population to go to war.

Tyranny of the minority is not better.

the senate was not originally meant to be elected. It was a way for the elites to maintain order if populism got out of hand. People often forget that the entire US Constitution is a response to the crisis of Shays Rebellion where the poor starting rebelling and even getting their members elected under the articles of confederation. The whole point of the senate is to limit democracy's threat to elites