Sen Zakas has introduced SB 108 which attempts to address the possibility of “faithless electors” – stating that if an elector doesn’t vote for the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidate of the political party that chose them, then their vote doesn’t count and constitutes their resignation; at which point, the remaining electors, by majority vote, would select a new elector.
This highlights that we’ve pretty well abandoned the Founding Fathers’ view of electors – sort of wise men the states would select to congregate and select the most suitable person to be President. Instead we just have this weird electoral calculus that confers somewhat more voting power to individuals who happen to be living in more rural states. California has about 615,000 people per electoral vote; whereas Wyoming has about 165,000 people per electoral vote.
And, I still agree it makes sense to give some voting room for land, not just people, so to speak.
If we went off of population alone, everything that we need done but want done somewhere else (coal power, waste disposal) will go to all of the rural areas. There does need to be some accounting for the land itself, not just the people in it. Imperfect as it may be, the current system seems to balance that *IF* you trust the people that live there to make the right decision on behalf of the land. In some cases, that trust has been misplaced.