Here's a short video I did with the great folks in the @nytopinion video department.

Watch it for a quick debunking of some of the most common and persistent myths about the Electoral College. But there's more! https://twitter.com/nytopinion/status/1313841514502451200

Here's a good way to think about it: The US *already has* a popular vote for president. In all 50 states and DC, the people themselves vote. What keeps that vote from being counted as such is NOT the Electoral College the framers designed, it's the way states have manipulated it.

State-based winner-take-all laws are the biggest single source of distortion in translating our popular will to election outcomes. They erase tens of millions of Americans' votes every 4 years, Republicans and Democrats, in small states and large.

Those winner-take-all laws are NOT in the Constitution. They are purely state creations. Even James Madison hated them as soon as he saw states adopting them in the early 19th century. He understood how much harm they do. He wanted to amend the Constitution to ban them.

Here's another way to look at it: States don't vote for president; people do. And people of different politics live everywhere. "Blue" states have millions of Republicans, "Red" states have millions of Democrats. But under winner-take-all, only the "battleground" states matter.

And that means everyone else doesn't matter. Especially those people who happen to be, through no fault of their own, in the political minority in their state. Those people might as well not exist at all. That's not the "Electoral College". That's state winner-take-all laws!

So if you're inclined to defend the "Electoral College," at least know what it is you're defending. It's not the provision in the Constitution. It's state laws that, depending on where you live, may make your vote meaningless.

Here's a final way to look at it: Any state legislature could change its law today and decide to award its electors without any input from voters at all. FL could guarantee Trump all 29 of its electors -- and very possibly the presidency -- right now! So why don't they do it?

Because in a modern republic, everyone *expects* to get to vote for their leader. No state has dared to try to take that right away since Colorado did in 1876. What states *will* do is erase your vote if you happen to be in the minority. How does that reflect "the state's will"?