Is it time for the USA to graduate from the Electoral College?

The National Public Vote initiative and Web site was founded by Stanford Engineer, John Koza. It has been gaining steam, and my state of Massachusetts yesterday joined the growing list of states that have voted to assign all their electoral votes to the presidential candidate winning the largest number of popular votes nationwide. The bill is on it’s way to Governor Deval Patrick’s desk, where it is expected to be signed. If Patric signs, Massachusetts will join Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey and Washington as popular vote states. With Patrick’s signature, 6 states with 73 (27%) of the 270 electoral votes will be determined by popular vote. New York appears poised to become the 7th popular vote state which would bring the total to 104 (38.5%) of all electoral votes being determined by popular vote.

Moving away from the Electoral College system would end, at least for presidential elections, the partisan practice of gerrymandering and carving up the country state by state with divisive political campaigning aimed at winning just the right combination of states to capture the electoral college majority even if, as happened with George W. Bush in 2000, Benjamin Harrison in 1888, Rutherford B.Hayes in 1876 and John Quincy Adams in 1824. the majority of Americans voted for the opponent. Interestingly, according to a CSPAN poll in 2009, those popular vote losers are rated as follows on a scale of 1–44, with 1 being the highest rating.

#19—John Q. Adams lost by 44,804
#30—Benjamin Harrison lost by 95,713
#33—Rutherford B Hayes lost by 264,292
#35—George W. Bush lost by 543,816

So it might appear the popular votes were more accurate predictors than the electoral college votes. Of the four who have lost the popular vote, only John Quincy Adams ranks above the 50th percentile in rankings, and he just barely so.