I'll just sort of copy-paste my argument from like two days ago here:

The cited example of winning with only 22% of the vote is fine as The electoral college isn't meant to represent People. This was done on purpose by the founding fathers, who were really freaked out by the idea of a so-called tyranny of the majority that they rejected the idea that Presidents should be elected by popular vote altogether.

Now, it just so happens, that 95% of the time, the president has won the popular vote as well as the Electoral vote. However, this is really just a funny side-effect, since the electoral college was never meant to Elect presidents by popular vote. Instead, it has two purposes in my opinion:

1. To Encourage people to spread out, penalizing large groups of people with the same political alignment who cluster together. This relates to the mentioned vote distribution in the video. If a state has a huge Margin of people who vote exactly the same way, every vote above 50% of the vote is discarded.

2. To encourage Coalition Building. Here is a map of the States you would need to win with 22% of the Popular vote to be elected president:

http://map1.maploco.com/visited-states/ml/AK-AL-AR-AZ-CO-CT-DC-DE-HI-IA-ID-IN-KS-KY-LA-MA-MD-ME-MN-MO-MS-MT-ND-NE-NH-NJ-NM-NV-OK-OR-RI-SC-SD-TN-UT-VA-VT-WI-WV-WY.png

If there is someone who can effectively unite parts of every region of the country, and convince radically different groups of people to all vote for the same candidate, that person deserves to be elected.

Who would be filtered out?

Great post imperator

No Jai is correct I am in favor of a civic test. Economics isn't a belief system. It is a science. If something cannot be proven it is a theory and has no place being tested on a large scale such as in the united states. Zero sum is a theory and has no place being tested in a large country with hundreds of millions of people. Try it out somewhere small and get back to us.

Umm, First, there are way too many schools of economics. While zero-sum is not generally considered valid, it is still considered one of the school of economics. You would end up discriminating against some specific school, which is not justifiable, as quite literally Classics or Keynesians may get excluded, and instead limited to pure mainstream left, which is what most economists today are.

its not a school it is a theory. And yes I will discriminate against theories because america isn't the testing ground for economic theories.

Well, so you suggest we through all of them out then, and what exactly do we do as an economic policy?

throw what out?

All of the economic theories, as there is no established proper economics. Keynes and the classicals practically disagree on every f***ing thing.

There are economic systems that have a good track record. Therefore they're no longer theories and are proper forms of managing scarce resources.

Edited 1/25/2016 04:53:36

I've got a good system: Spend less than you earn.

That doesn't make any sense Thomas. Since when do we spend LESS than we make? F*cking autistic baby would never make it in government