The Blue Board

Have you paid attention to elections in recent years? Under the electoral college model, the candidates spend all their time and money in 7 or 8 states because the rest of the states are guaranteed to vote a certain way. Almost all of the southern states (Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Texas, etc.) are guaranteed to vote republican. Almost all the states in the northeast (New York, New Jersey, Mass, etc) are guaranteed to vote democratic

I understand that, but I don't want the candidates to pander to the cities only (population centers). That is just as bad if not worse. I don't have the full-proof answer, but much like instant replay, the electoral college stands (nowhere near the amount of support needed for an amendment to get rid of it).

The best solution is to get viable 3rd party candidates, but in order to do that people must start voting them in at the local level. I would love it if I could choose b/n 5 guys/gals in the election and they have a run-off if nobody gets the magical 217 in the EC. WIth viable 3rd/4th parties, candidates would be forced to campaign in every state (granted the lib candidates would focus on CA and the conservatives would focus on TX...), but they would still get focus across the board. What if 2 more liberal candidates were the top two. Imagine their run-off debates/ads in TX, AL,... This would also force the politiicians to work together to get things done as no one party would likely be able to do anything on their own. If things were like this (gridlock) b/f we had 1000s of laws/regs and over 70K pages in the IRS tax code, then I'd love gridlock (Feds shouldn't do much anyway - see Art 1 Sect 8).

^^^^^^^^^^^Most of this jibberish makes no sense. Under the electoral college, politicians have no reason to care about certain states because they have no chance of winning those states anyway. The bottom line is truly every vote would mean something under a popular vote scenario. Every vote does not mean something in an electoral college model