Andrew Soboeiro: Time to tweak voting problems

Your Nov. 26 letter, “Electoral College serves its purpose,” identified a real problem but failed to solve it.

The author is correct that we should guard against the tyranny of the majority. But the Electoral College, at least in its present form, merely replaces the tyranny of the national majority with the tyranny of voters in Ohio, Florida, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

The result is a system where one group of voters can still run roughshod over all the others, but now those voters don’t even have to be in the majority.

If we’re serious about ensuring broad representation, we need elections where the victor must win more, not less, than a majority of votes. One solution would be to require a “supermajority,” say 55 percent or 60 percent of the popular vote, to become president.

Alternatively, we could keep the Electoral College but require the victor to win a majority of the popular vote as well as a majority of electors. But the present system, where a candidate can win the popular vote but lose the election, cannot continue.

This story was originally published December 8, 2016 at 10:57 AM with the headline "Andrew Soboeiro: Time to tweak voting problems."