Should the United States go by the popular vote instead of the electoral vote?

Columnist | No. We operate generally on a Federalist system. I mention that to give historical perspective to our methods used to strike a balance between a strong central government and individual state powers . As part of our checks and balances, the states choose the President. This allows the smaller, interior, or more rural states to be protected from the tyranny of the more populous coastal states, for example. A few years back people talked about Bush v Gore. If you look closely at the 2000 popular vote, Gore scored approximately 531,179 more popular votes than Bush according to UC Santa Barbara. Of that 531,179 votes, 2,998,097 came from the states of California and New York. The choice of President is more like a nationwide consensus pick by the States. Nobody gets totally robbed, and most everyone thinks they are getting robbed a little. That is often considered a good definition of a fair deal. We can quibble about the source and count, but the concept on this election will hold true with your choice of sources. My discussion is limited to popular counts. Congressmen are elected to Districts based on apportioned state population to total population, with no state getting left out. The Senate is two per state which is another check and balance in the legislative branch. It all seems to work pretty well as long as you stick to the concept.