Googling myself to see what might turn up, I ended up reading some editorial commentary with which I strongly agree, mainly about the electoral college, as well as a dissenting opinion, in Slate, by the jurist Richard Posner.
The first paragraph of the Wikipedia article on Posner describes him as a legal theorist and an economist, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh District, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, and a leading figure in the field of law and economics. Further on, we learn that he graduated first in his class at Harvard Law School. I assume, therefore, that he's capable of making a case, and that the almost laughable ineptness of his defense of the electoral college indicates that this Rube Goldberg machine really must be an indefensible bad joke.
Here's a representative specimen of Posner's case--It's the third of his five reasons for keeping the electoral college:
The winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes induces the candidates—as we saw in last week’s election—to focus their campaign efforts on the toss-up states; that follows directly from the candidates’ lack of inducement to campaign in states they are sure to win. Voters in toss-up states are more likely to pay close attention to the campaign—to really listen to the competing candidates—knowing that they are going to decide the election. They are likely to be the most thoughtful voters, on average (and for the further reason that they will have received the most information and attention from the candidates), and the most thoughtful voters should be the ones to decide the election.
I have to admit, it's true that the electoral college makes the four-fifths of us who do not live in The Battleground States passive spectators without a voice. I had thought this was one of the items in its interminable debit column. Happily, however, it converts the people of The Battlegound States into the Platonic forms of earnest citizens determined to deliver the best candidate to the rest of us low-information types who understand only that our vote doesn't count. Maybe we should follow the argument to its logical conclusion and select by lottery one person to choose the president. With all that responsibility, and the advantage of all the campaign white papers written to his reading level, there's no question but that he'd choose wisely.
Posner's other reasons aren't any good, either.
