If You Can't Beat 'Em - Cheat

[Angrboda]

I don't consider it cheating, or even unfair. There has long been a popular desire to reform or abolish the electoral college to make its results more consistent with the popular vote. Their timing may be strategic, but it's far from simple dirty politics. One of the most serious challenges to reform the electoral system occurred at the urging of the Democrats when Nixon defeated Hubert Humphrey with less than a 1% margin of the popular vote. So for non-Republicans to call it cheating when Republicans push for it, and ignore the long standing support for such measures from both Democrats and Republicans, is hypocritical. There are good arguments for and against retaining the electoral college, and in the past I've supported retention of it, but there is certainly broad based appeal to the idea of moving to a popular vote election; this is simply a step in that direction.

And it's not clear from the article if this is simply a continuation of old trends or a sea change aimed at manipulating the election; I'd like to see some actual evidence that this is an actual intent to 'cheat' the American people. Moreover, it's not clear exactly how the Democrats feel this would be unfair to them, as Obama won the popular vote in both the 2008 and 2012 elections; if anything, the president whose election would most seriously have been effected would have been Bush's win in 2000 when Al Gore won the popular vote. And it's well known that the results of such reforms are unpredictable, as current elections are geared to exploit the current system, any changes made would change the way campaigns attempt to exploit that new system — the results are unpredictable. One might just as well say that people like Min want to rig the election by hanging on to an unfair system. There's two sides to every coin.