Why do we still have an Electoral College in the US?
pbh101: I've heard that it currently ensures that more, disparate voices will be heard.  As Jonah Goldberg once said, democracy shouldn't work such that "51% of the country can give the other 49% a wedgie".Were the electoral model to be abandoned, it would ensure that candidates would stick to major urban areas as much as possible because they would have the largest amount of influence per unit of effort.  Now, this wouldn't hold true in all cases, but from what I understand the Electoral College as it stands helps to ensure that the sundry opinions of different interests in this country are given more consideration.Interesingly, before the electoral reforms of the 1800s in Britain, seat allocations weren't decided by population, but rather influenced by the weighting of the needs of various regional trades/industries.  While this seems very anti-democratic to modern American ideals, at that time industries were much closer to the individual.  Also, I'm not so sure it was a bad idea:  you baked lobbying and the concerns of industries into the political system as opposed to grafting it on in a shadowy, behind-the-scenes system, and therefore had the ability to regulate it to some degree.