Quote Originally Posted by Atmosfear View Post
Actually, what I'm saying is that the total number of votes in the election should not be the major factor in deciding the influence of any one region. My issue with the simple majority is that it allows the 51% majority to abuse the 49%.
In terms of general governance in a democracy, I absolutely agree, and it is also one of the major reasons why we have our systems of representative government.

But we're not talking about representative democracy in general. We're talking about electing a president. Unfortunately, there can only be one winner, and if it comes down to a 1% spread, then the candidate that got 1% of the vote should win. Of course, we could go back to having the winner with the 2nd highest total be the vice-president, but that's obviously a different discussion.

The point is that California can only count for X percentage of the total outcome. If all 36 million California voters turned out in an election that totaled 50 million votes, they could elect a candidate who serves only their own agenda. As it is now, even if the voters from a single state total a majority of the overall election, their influence on the outcome is limited by their actual size. Fortunately, we don't usually see a major skew in voter turnout (most states have roughly the same turnout as a percentage of registered voters), but it could happen and the system shouldn't be exploitable by that.
That's not preventing the other Americans from turning out to vote, though I see what you're saying, and to be honest of all the arguements I've heard for an electoral college, this is the probably the best I've heard thus far.

Nonetheless, I feel like there is even more danger of this in sweetheart deals to buy support from officials on the federal level, namely among senators and representatives that include kickbacks to their states in bills in order to secure their vote. I seriously doubt that such kickback deals for certain states or regions could be easily sold to individual voters.