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The EC is truly stupid. I figure eventually the stupidity of it will eventually become obvious to enough people that it goes away.

It just goes away because it's stupid?  Like gasohol went away because it's stupid?

How do these things just "go away"?  I'm curious about that.  I had some notion there had to be substantive steps taken for them to "go away".

Of course a good counterpoint on dumbness in the system


https://twitter.com/axios/status/1290497186489348096?s=19

As to the Senators not "answering to the people," that was by design.  The people had their Representatives in "the people's house," answerable every two years.
Senators being chosen in a different way from Representatives was one of the checks and balances.  The Progressives did not like checks and balances, because they wanted to pass legislation.  Making Senators more like Representatives with longer terms was a way to weaken one of the checks.  Direct election of Senators had been a Popululist demand before the Progressives arrived on the scene.  Short of the KKK, the American Nazi Party, and the Communist Party USA, Populists and Progressives are my two least-favorite political movements in American history.  If they both support an idea, my default analysis is that it was a bad one.
There weren't nearly as many career U.S. Senators then as there are now.  I looked it up a few years ago.  IIRC, 19 of the 20 longest Senate tenures have been since the ratification of the 17th Amendment.
It's interesting discussing the 17th Amendment, but it's also sort of pissing in the wind, because the 17th is not going away.

All you have to do is look at how often Senators were changed out before the 17th amendment. Senators lost their seats all the time because of some issue or another. It wasn't too unusual for Senators to resign mid-term because they lost the support of their state legislatures. 

they can't get enough votes to matter

there are many swing states that get attention now that would be passed by if it was merely a popular vote

Sure, though popular support can seem to swing wildly. For example, in recent history just look at how we've viewed kneeling for the national anthem, or legalizing gay marriage. While there is no question people worked very hard on those issues, to some extent it's just people being confronted with a new idea and realizing it's fine despite initial reservations.

The EC seems like something that could be like that. Some people's vote counting more than others is dumb. Candidates ignoring half the states is dumb. Call me an optimist but we will eventually hit less dumbness in our system.

Yeah, but it requires a Constitutional amendment to get rid of the Electoral College. Even the Supreme Court won't just unilaterally declare the electoral college, which is written into the Constitution, to be unconstitutional. This isn't like gay marriage. 

So unless you get consistent election results where the EC and the popular vote diverge, it won't happen.

And then you need 3/4 of the states to ratify it. Which is an EXTREMELY high bar for something like this because you have a bunch of smaller states and red states that don't want to get rid of their power and have the President elected by California and New York, so the vote that matters (number of states) is stacked against the very group that has the power to ratify a Constitutional amendment. 

So you need such overwhelming popular support in red states to force their legislature to overturn an electoral college which gives excess weight to red states. 

How do you propose we're going to get around that?

They would be paid attention to in proportion to the number of voters there, which truly seems like the fairest way to do it.

so, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa and Wisconsin
wouldn't matter, at all

if they did somehow become a swing state with EC votes, they probably don't either, but there's a chance

3 million folks in Iowa, half of them vote, 60% go to to more popular candidate.  Flyover country - no voice

so, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa and Wisconsin
wouldn't matter, at all

if they did somehow become a swing state with EC votes, they probably don't either, but there's a chance

3 million folks in Iowa, half of them vote, 60% go to to more popular candidate.  Flyover country - no voice

It's interesting. In the EC arrangement, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Nebraska, Kansas all fall into the "Don't matter" category. 

In the larger sense, states are still arbitrary. If Wyoming has around as many people as Oakland, why should it have this special hold? Because it's bigger in terms of land? Because it's drawn somewhere? 

That's not to be flippant. These are all just ideas of places to one degree or another, with structures built around that.