One of the major problems with the electoral college and today's
system for
election is that if a large
state is seen as "locked in", then
neither
candidate will
campaign there, ignoring the
issues that that
state (possibly a very large one) would bring up. This does not
encourage
voter turnout in these states and continues to contribute
to the
apathy with government today - They aren't concerned with me, why
should I be concerned with them?
Many states are of the form "winner takes all", in which all the electors
for a given state vote for the person who has a majority in the state.
This system allows the worst case as seen above and makes it very
difficult for any third party to get the majority of a single state, even
though they may have a very large following. Furthermore, this
"winner takes all" means that the vote of a person in one state that
does not tip the balance is worth less than the vote of another person
in a different state that does tip the balance. With the electoral college,
not everyone's vote is worth the same but rather depends on the state
that they live in.