The point OP made was that it's First Past The Post that's the problem, not the electoral college itself. And you arrived at the same conclusion, just using different words.

Another bonus of getting rid of FPTP is that there would be no "swing states" that get 90% of the campaign activity, all states would suddenly be roughly equally important.

cletus is proposing that individual states' elections switch from FPTP to AV or a similar system. This would make it possible to vote for "minor" candidates while still having an impact of which of the "major" candidates gets in, but it would not, even a little tiny bit, stop the election being decided by the results in a small number of swing states. It would certainly not mean that "all states would suddenly be roughly equally important".

The solution downandout is proposing is not at all like the solution cletus is proposing; the two did not arrive at "the same conclusion" and the difference between them is not only one of words.

> That hardly reflects the will of the people in the context of a /national/ election.

Federal.

Well, actually I used the term "national" to try to distinguish it from senate and congressional races. The term "federal election" may in the minds of many include senate and congressional races, both of which are decided exclusively by the vote within the state and aren't part of this discussion. Had I said "federal election" I would have undoubtedly been corrected on that point as well.

I was trying to make the point that it's not an accident of history that the President isn't elected by popular vote, but for good reasons. The President isn't running just a big collection of people, he's running a union of states. The states send electors to choose the President, and each state take popular opinion into account by way of the popular vote.

This is good because it means that each state's interest is represented (though the fact that only swing states get the focus is something that should be addressed). I live in Rhode Island and I like that we get some consideration. Large low-population states are another consideration.

...and on posting my reply I see this was already addressed very well in an earlier reply to a parent comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4737359

Hmm, offtopic but I'm curious: there's a semantic difference between the two terms? So the FBI and the NSA somehow operate at different levels, tied to different entities? If so, what's the difference?

National is having to do with the nation, federal is having to do with the federal government.

National Basketball Association and Federal Bureau of Investigation obviously make sense. National Security Agency is a federal agency charged with security of the nation.