So, it turns out that there has been this quiet state level push to effectively abolish the electoral college.  How they are doing it is an ingenious bit of political science.  States are passing bills that would guarantee that all of the electoral votes for the state will go to whomever receives the most popular votes from the entire country.  The kicker is that this will only happen once enough states representing half of the electoral votes pass a similar bill.  Rhode Island just signed on and that puts them half way to their goal.  Or, states representing one quarter of the total electoral votes have now signed on.  Once they reach their goal, bam, the President of the United States will forever be elected by the popular vote instead of the electoral college even though the electoral college will still exist.  Constitution followed, check.  Popular vote enabled, check.  Ingenious.

Of course, as the article states, the likelihood of getting enough states to sign on is pretty low since only Democratic states have been able to pass it and any individual state could always just change the law back to what it once was.  Which is a shame.  The only decent reason to keep the electoral college is to maintain minority representation and minority states already get massive over-representation from the Senate.  I don’t think they need the same at the Executive level.  Regardless, it’s still pretty cool political science jujitsu even if it will ultimately fail.