How I Would Fix the Electoral College

I've been spending some time on Threads lately and one conversation I see a lot is about the Electoral College and a growing desire to see it abolished and replaced with a popular election. This is an argument I usually come across whenever there's a presidential election, especially situations, like in 2016, when the popular vote winner wasn't the candidate who won. 

There are admittedly some flaws with our current system, which awards candidates electoral votes by state. In states that are solid red, for example, like Texas, there's almost no point in a Democrat casting a vote. This is the same for Republican candidates in solid blue states like California. The system also effectively puts the decision in the hands of a select few "swing" states every four years as a result of that.

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That said, I've always been a bit hesitant about supporting a presidential election that is based solely on the popular vote. While it might seem fair on paper, more than 51 percent of America's population lives in less than a dozen states. So, while every vote may technically be counted, it's still a situation where a small percentage of states are ultimately determining the outcome.

My solution instead would be a hybrid system that keeps the Electoral College with each state counting based on its population but add 51 "at-large" electoral votes (one for each state and Washington, D. C.) that are awarded to the candidate with the most overall votes, to ensure all voices are heard.

How much of an impact would 51 electoral votes have? It wouldn't have changed the outcome of the 2016 election, which saw Hillary Clinton win the popular vote by about 3 million but losing in an electoral landslide (Clinton won by more than 4 million votes in California. Trump won by nearly 1.5 million votes in the remainder of the country). It would, however, have changed the outcome of the 2000 election, with Al Gore beating George W. Bush.

The reality is, with a population that is spread over so much territory and with states that are larger than many European countries, you are never going to have a perfect way to elect the President of the United States. Ultimately, the current system does work most of the time with only three candidates since 1876 becoming president without winning the popular vote. This compromise solution is something that might improve on that going forward but there's probably no system that isn't going to leave people unhappy with the results.