Taking on our Electoral College bill

CNN's Bill Schneider takes on Maryland's Electoral College debacle (with video, too):

In our current system, the president is elected by the electoral college and not directly by the people. The number of electoral votes each state receives depends on its population and representatives are chosen to vote on behalf of the people in the state. To win, a candidate has to win 270 electoral votes, which is a majority. If neither candidate gets that, Congress determines who wins. A few times, the American people's choice for president hasn't actually moved into the White House.

It's mostly Democrats who are behind this move. They're still angry over how Bush got elected, even though in 2004, a shift of about 60 thousand votes in Ohio would have elected John Kerry despite Bush's popular vote margin of over three million.

The new system would also nationalize the presidential campaign. Right now, candidates spend most of their time campaigning in battleground states. Often they try to win over voters in little tiny places, like South Succotash, Ohio, and East Icicle, New Hampshire.

If the new system were adopted, constitutional scholar Tom Mann said there would be major changes to campaign strategies. "You would see a much greater emphasis by the candidates campaigning in large, uncompetitive states. States like California, Texas and New York," he said.

The campaigns would go to ignored places like Houston and Los Angeles and New York because there are a lot of voters in those places. And unlike before, their votes would now matter.

But the new rules would also disconnect a state's voters from its electors. Maryland voters could vote 100 percent Democratic, but if the Republican won the national vote, Maryland's electoral vote would go to the Republican. "It's based on the proposition that, say, those of us who live in Maryland care more about the national outcome of the popular vote for the president across the country than we do for our own particular state," Mann said.

Since independents and third party candidates would no longer have to carry entire states, it would encourage more of them to get in. Someone could win the national vote with a bare plurality, perhaps as low as 25 or 30 percent. And a very weak mandate.

And, leaving the Constitutionality questions that I have raised aside, that goes back to this fundamental point; why did Maryland legislators find any of this to be a good thing?