Letters to the Editor: Save the electoral college by ditching winner take all

To the editor: The debate has started again as to whether the U.S. Constitution should be amended in order to change the presidential election process. Some promote eliminating the electoral college in favor of a direct popular vote for president, while others believe the system should remain unchanged.

Just as compromising solved some of the intractable problems faced by the Constitution’s framers, so it is that compromise can solve this problem.

The solution is to change the electoral votes to electoral points and reward each candidate a percentage of points based on the percentage of popular votes received in each state.

This would eliminate the winner-take-all system in almost every state, thus allowing for all the votes to count. Voters are more likely to believe their votes count when a percentage of popular votes are taken into account rather than the all-or-nothing system currently in existence.

Further, this new system would integrate the desire for a popular vote for president with the need for the individual states to determine who actually gets elected. As for political primaries, the number of delegates awarded in each state should be determined by the percentage of votes won by each candidate.

Joe Bialek, Cleveland

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To the editor: Inasmuch as the population of 10 states makes up more than half of the total U.S. population, and assuming that registered voters in those states and elsewhere number proportionally, abolishing the electoral college would serve to allow a few population centers to dominate the national presidential political and electoral scene.

Even as Republican voters in California are currently disenfranchised as far as presidential elections are concerned, so might those of 40 states of the union should the Constitution be so amended.

Louis H. Nevell, Los Angeles