Richard,

Oh good, now we've got a more narrow field on which to focus. Well then, by all means let me begin.

>For example, why would a candidate tour the Wyomings, >Kansas's and Iowa's of the country if he/she could
> swing the vote by hitting NYC, LA and Chicago hard?

For the exact same reasons that they do now. In fact, those smaller states would be even more important to a would-be candidate if the electoral college didn't exist. As things currently stand, candidates spend huge amounts of time in states like New York and California, because if they can convince just 50% of that state to vote for them, then they've won a huge percentage of the electoral votes they need to win. By winning California, Gore got nearly 20% of the votes he needed to win.

If there were no electoral college, then getting the majority in a state wouldn't be anything big. If Gore got 50% of the vote in California, while Bush got 48% (I'm making these numbers up as I don't know the actual ones), then that close margin would be reflected in the actual vote, and neither candidate would take a huge leap toward victory. Thus, every single vote counts, so if you could convince 70% of Arizona to vote for you, you'd have a nice chunk of the population on your side. So states which now are swing states would just become a part of the national population of votes, and state boundaries wouldn't matter for the vote. People would. And the people in Kansas are just as important as the people anywhere else. In fact, people in places like Texas, who were ignored by Gore (since he knew Bush would win the state), would have their place in the system restored, knowing that whichever vote they cast would be counted.

> If things remained the same but there was no electoral >college, then it would be decided by individuals who can
> work the big cities even though the majority of the >heartland wouldn't trust that individual to serve sodas =o)
> (Do you know who I'm referring to!!!???)

I think I've made my refutation of this argument above; I just included this statement to respond to its ending. I can only assume that in this joke, you're referring to Clarence Thomas, someone whose soda I would definitely avoid.

-Scott