The argument comes up every four years. But here is one thing I don't think anybody has thought of.

The military.

According to the Department of Defense (as quoted in Wikipedia) there are currently 1,429,995, as of 2010 (date of the last census); also, there are 850,880 reservists and National Guard members.

Everyone in the military is from somewhere (duh). When deployed, or at a military base not in their home state, they can vote by absentee ballot. But there's not enough military personnel from a single state, or even a single bloc of states, to tip the electoral college one way or the other.

However, abolish the electoral college, you just dumped 2,280,775 votes into the SAME single presidential constituency with the other 308 million Americans (not sure how many are over 18, I'll have to check that), and made them the largest special interest within it.

The military is supposed to be APOLITICAL and that's why we haven't had a coup in this country. They remain apolitical as long as they cannot tip the balance. Remember, elections are won in the margins.

The military remains, and will continue to remain, apolitical IF they're scattered around the country in 51 different voting blocs. But we abolish the EC, you make the US military the single, largest special interest within it.

Even if the military were evenly divided between candidate A and candidate B, a margin of ONE military vote is 1,140,438 voters. All within one voting bloc. Has anyone been elected by the popular vote by less than that in recent times?

Yes! Here a a few "close" elections (less than the size of the current military size...unfortunately I don't have census data for military personnel in these years, however...but I think it demonstrates my point).

534,895 - Al Gore over George W. Bush in 2000 (101,455,899 votes cast)
1,683,247 - Carter defeated Ford in 1976 (79,980,515 votes cast)
511,944 - Nixon won over Humphreys in 1968 (72,956,740 votes cast)
112,827 - Kennedy won over Nixon in 1960 (68,329,141 votes cast)

If the EC were abolished, my point is, the military would suddenly have the power to tip the balance in any presidential election. Assuming all the military voted, its current size is 2.25% (roughly) of the number of people who cast votes in 2000. And if there were no EC in 2000, the numbers show that that would have been more than enough to tip the balance. (4.3 times as many mind you!)

And the only other option would be to exclude the military from voting in federal elections, particularly for their own commander-in-chief. I'm sure they'd love that, considering that they're out there fighting for a right to vote which they cannot take part in. In any case, the military, which would now have the power to at least influence a presidential election, would cease to be apolitical. Which is exactly what the doctor ordered in a democracy, don't you think?

I'm not sure why you think that 'the military' having the ability to be decisive in an election if they all go ahead and vote the same way would prevent them from being apolitical. Being apolitical is a matter of the institutional culture of the organisation. Besides, if it's something to be worried about at Presidential level then surely it's equally worrying at a lower level no ? The most recent figures I could find from a half-assed google search tell me that the State of Hawaii has 50578 active service military personnel out of a voter population of 690748. 7.3% of the voting population in other words, which ought to be enough to swing any election. Doesn't seem to though does it ?

There's 50 other units to the electoral college, Sass. Hawaii, btw, has 4 out of 538 electoral votes.

Political and institutional culture can change. And even the most noble, the most patriotic, the most apolitical people, would scarcely sit still and elect or re-elect someone totally unacceptable to themselves.

One wonders what a google search would reveal about countries where the military can't vote. There are countries like that that don't let their active duty servicemen vote.

You missed my point. What I'm saying is that if military personnel can be expected to vote their own interests as a solid bloc then you'd expect to be able to see some evidence of that happening in jurisdictions where they have disproportionate representation, such as Hawaii. It doesn't appear to be happening though, or not unless you think US Navy personnel are all rock-solid Democrats...

Again, how can you tell it isn't happening, with the EC still in place?

In any case, you abolish the EC, you've just thrown in everyone in the same constituency, and special interests, or factions or groups of any kind, could, as large blocs, "swing" the election themselves.

I don't really understand your point here, but I'll spell out my own. I think we can safely rule out the idea that military personnel are inclined to vote as a solid bloc based on the history of political representation in Hawaii. I think we can safely rule out the idea that military personnel are overwhelmingly Democratic in their voting behaviour, wouldn't you say ? They're probably not overwhelmingly Republican either, but I'd say it's likely that they lean that way. So why is it that a state where such a large proportion of the voters are active service military personnel (which doesn't even count military veterans) always returns Democrats to Congress ? You'd think that an active bloc of Republican-inclined voters and their relatives would make Hawaii into a competitive state, but it isn't. I think the answer must be that services personnel are not inclined to vote as a bloc and while they may lean Republican they don't do so in sufficient numbers for it to materially change the result of elections,not even in such a forces-heavy state as Hawaii. If they can't manage to swing elections in Hawaii then they're unlikely to have much effect at a national level where they'd be more diluted.

Many military members maintain their state residency while in service to their country.

right that's my whole point. Spread out. Everyone is spread out. Not saying special interests or large groups don't have a role in elections now but if the EC were abolished, it would be a shit ton worse. You see my point now?

You haven't actually presented any evidence that the military votes as a bloc. This seems to suggest the opposite:

http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/milita ... you-think/

It is true that the upper echelons of the military tilt right. My own research confirmed that about two-thirds of majors and higher-ranking officers identify as conservative, as previous studies found. But that tilt becomes far less pronounced when you expand the pool of respondents. That is because only 32 percent of the Army’s enlisted soldiers consider themselves conservative, while 23 percent identify as liberal and the remaining 45 percent are self-described moderates. These numbers closely mirror the ideological predilections of the civilian population. . . .
The political differences between officers and enlisted personnel can be partly explained by a demographic divide. Whereas officers are predominantly white, have at least a bachelor’s degree, and draw incomes that place them in the middle or upper-middle class, the enlisted ranks have a higher proportion of minorities, make less money than officers, and typically enter service with only a high school diploma. Nevertheless, even when controlling for factors like race and gender, officers are significantly more likely than soldiers to identify as conservative. . . .
In addition to its ideological moderation, the Army is not as partisan as popularly portrayed. Whereas 65 percent of Americans think of themselves as either Republican or Democrat, according to the Annenberg survey, my study shows that only 43 percent of the military identifies with one of the two major political parties. Two out of three officers consider themselves either Republican or Democrat, but only 37 percent of enlisted personnel do so

It's not really surprising that political affiliation is less pronounced among military personnel than among the general populace because most of them are young men, who as a group are always less politically engaged. I doubt that this would change very much whether you had the EC or not. If you know of any evidence of military bloc voting then by all means let's see it.

To reinforce what Sass is offering evidence for, that the US military is highly unlikely to ever vote enbloc...

17% are Black/. 25 % minorities.
Blacks and Hispanics vote differently than whites...
95% voted for Obama in 2012.
Being in the Army isn't likely to change the way minorities vote.

http://www.statisticbrain.com/demograph ... -military/

The reasons to get rid of the electoral colege are many.
One is that there is no legal way to hold someone in the Electoral College to vote for the person they are assigned to vote for...and in the past EC members have changed votes. (1 for Wallace that I remember)
Two is that it does not reflect the one man one vote concept of democracy ... There have been many elections where the person with the most votes nationally did not win the Presidency. Most recently A Gore.
As demonstrated in the Gore/Bush election a suspect election in Florida decided the national out come. There are many who claim the process was rigged, and it was certainly flawed. Florida state authorities had the ability to swing the state, and then the nation, based on arbitrary decisions and this was possible only because the electoral college was used and not popular vote nationally.

There have been many elections where the person with the most votes nationally did not win the Presidency

Actually, Ricky, if you bothered to look up the statistics, you'll find that there have been TWO elections (three if you want to count the collossal balls-up that was the election of 1876) wherein the popular vote pointed to one candidate and the electoral college to a different one.

But if you think "two" = "many", well, I guess that's a matter of semantics.

One is that there is no legal way to hold someone in the Electoral College to vote for the person they are assigned to vote for...and in the past EC members have changed votes. (1 for Wallace that I remember)

Wrong again. There is. I do not know how many states (I heard 25 of the 51 "states") have done it, but since the episode in NC in 1968, more and more states have passed laws legally binding the electors to their pledges.

Blacks and Hispanics vote differently than whites...

Oh really? I'm sure maybe there is some truth to that, but you make that statement as if it is an absolute.

Sass: I never said the military voted as a bloc.

In fact, I said:

Even if the military were evenly divided between candidate A and candidate B, a margin of ONE military vote is 1,140,438 voters. All within one voting bloc. Has anyone been elected by the popular vote by less than that in recent times?

Well if you're not saying that then I don't really understand what you are saying. If the military does not vote as a bloc then what difference does it make whether they vote in their individual states as part of the EC or as individual voters in a nationwide vote for President ?

I should add that I don't really think reform of the electoral college ought to be a top priority if you're looking at constitutional change. As you say, historically it hasn't been a big deal over the years. I do think the argument you're making here is odd though.

Odd because you disagree? I realize I'm not Mr Eloquent; I wasn't on the debate team in high school, mind you. (I did manage to get myself elected three years in a row in high school by going in front of 1,000 other students, however, so I must have had some persuasive powers.)

But you do seem to be missing some of my point. Or I am just not good at explaining myself sometimes. It is a rather arcane concept I admit.

I'm not trying to be a prick about this, I genuinely don't understand what you're getting at. Let's take this and break it down:

Even if the military were evenly divided between candidate A and candidate B, a margin of ONE military vote is 1,140,438 voters. All within one voting bloc. Has anyone been elected by the popular vote by less than that in recent times?

This doesn't make any sense to me. If the military vote is split 50/50 then it's 1140438 votes for each candidate. A margin of 1 military vote means that one of the candidates gets a single vote more from that particular demographic than the other one does. How does that change anything ?