Is the Electoral College "Fair"?

Is the Electoral College a fair way to decide who gets elected President of the United States? I guess it depends on what you mean by fair. First, a little history:

When the founders were putting together the Constitution, the framework for the governance of the United States, they did not really trust direct democracy. This distrust derived from several assumptions. James Madison warned about the rise of "factions"; he envisioned a single-issue faction growing to more than 50% and imposing its will on the rest (the tyranny of the majority). In general, the founders did not trust "the people" to always make the correct decisions and set up an additional layer in the Presidential election system “that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” according to Alexander Hamilton. You can see the distrust for the will of the people in the early practice of Senators being chosen, not by direct election, but by appointment of state legislatures and by the restriction of the franchise to white landowners. The other influence on the creation of the electoral college was the fact that most people in that time viewed themselves more as citizens of their state than as "Americans". The United States under the Articles of Confederation was just that - thirteen "states" (state being back then more commonly applied to a sovereign nation than a subdivision of a larger country) - bound together by mutual treaties to act in concert, more like the European Union than the United States of today. Due to that attitude, much attention was paid to the rights of states, rather than individuals. Much was made of the more populous Northern states dominating the less populous Southern states, which is how we ended up with a Senate, which gave equal representation to each state, while the House of Representatives was proportional by population. Even within the House of Representatives, even the most sparsely populated states receive at least one representative, and are not joined together in one Congressional district with another state. It's interesting that state legislatures used to operate this way, but the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional, that it violated the principle of one man, one vote. 

When it came to organizing the electoral college, the principle of recognizing the distinctness of each state still held. Each state was assigned a number electors equal to the number of Congressional Representatives and Senators. In practice, 48 states award all of their electoral votes to whoever receives the most votes within the state (not necessarily a majority). Even the two that don't, break it down by Congressional district and award two votes to the overall state winner. 

Since we have had two elections in recent memory where the winner of the popular vote was not the winner in the Electoral College, there has been renewed concern. Admittedly, it's usually supporters of the candidate who lost in the Electoral College that make the most fuss, but it's a legitimate concern. 

One of the arguments for keeping the Electoral College is that with direct election, highly populous regions or urban areas would hold an undue influence on the result, that by focusing on ten or twelve large metropolitan areas, candidates would ignore rural areas and smaller cities. But how is that different than what we have now? The large cities in California dominate over the small cities and rural areas and take all of the state's 55 electoral votes. New York City is  much more Liberal/Democratic than the rest of the state and their population negates the more Conservative/Republican votes in the rest of New York. Nebraska is all but ignored, with our five measly electoral votes, safely in the R column, not really worth the effort of campaigning here. (Although in a close election, campaigning for that one vote in District 2 happens on occasion). No matter what system that we use, states with higher populations (and hence populous urban areas within those populous states) will have more influence. However, in the current system, rural states receive proportionally more influence, since every state is guaranteed a minimum of three electoral votes. A state with three electoral votes has 0.56% of the electoral votes, while Wyoming, which has three electoral votes, has only 0.17% of the nation's population. 

The difference in a direct election system is that the votes in say, New York City, will not negate the votes in upstate New York. Every vote in the state will contribute toward the result. 

I believe part of the fondness in some quarters for the Electoral College, other than "my guy won", is an attachment for the concept that we're primarily citizens of different, unique states, not primarily Americans. 

No matter what system we use, some areas will have more influence than others, no matter what system we use, candidates will campaign in areas where the most votes are, the difference with a direct election system is that the votes of the Republican rural potato farmer in upstate New York will count exactly the same as the vote of the Democratic schoolteacher in New York City; the liberal college professor's vote in Lincoln Nebraska will count the same as the rancher in the Panhandle. The vote in near-the-Arctic Circle Alaska will have as much influence as a vote in Los Angeles. I saw a map this morning (pictured to the right)which purported

to show that half of the US population lived in the counties shaded in blue. This map was used as an argument that we should retain the Electoral College, since these small geographical areas had more influence than the rest of the vast stretches of the nation. To this I say "so what?" If there's more people in an area, that area should have more votes. England in the early 1800's had what was called "rotten boroughs", where parliamentary districts shrunk in population, but the law made no provision for changing election district boundaries as population changed. The Wikipedia page on rotten boroughs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten_and_pocket_boroughs lists eight districts with less than 50 voters, two with only seven! The law was changed in 1832 to reflect population changes. Of course, this is not exactly the situation in the United States, but we do have a system where one person's vote counts for more than another's simply because of where that voter lives. 

The one objection that I have for scrapping the electoral college in favor of direct election is operational. Right now, most states' elections are not that close and recounts are rare. When the majority of states show a clear winner, it isn't even necessary to count all the votes. For instance, if Nebraska has counted 92% of the ballots, and Trump is ahead 70% - 30%, there just aren't enough votes in that 8% of uncounted ballots to make a difference. Currently, we count them all, but we concede that Trump has won that state long before all the votes are in. In a close race under direct election, what might trigger a recount? What would be recounted? I believe that five days after the election, we're still counting votes from Election Day. How long does it really take to count all the votes? Better election day security and modernization of balloting and counting, as well as better fail-safes and paper trails would be necessary before a direct election could take place.

One probable side effect of switching to direct election of the President might be the proliferation of third parties. One of the main impediments to a third party presidency is the electoral college. In very few instances has an independent candidate gotten any electoral votes. A third party contender, even while losing, might garner enough votes to be able to receive support for future runs. Right now, the prospect of zero electoral votes discourages serious candidates. Some would welcome competition to the two major parties, others point to the sometimes chaotic elections in European countries or in Israel, where there are a dozen parties, many of them single-issue, all competing for votes, where governments can only form when two or more parties form a coalition.

All in all, what is "fair" is for the person who receives a majority of votes cast should be elected as President (maybe a runoff? - but that's an argument for another day). I'm not suggesting that the results of this election be overturned, or that the electors not vote according to the will of the voters in their states - Trump won the election by the rules that were in place at the start of the election - but that we seriously consider changing the rules so that every vote counts, and counts equally.