To the editor: John York denigrates popular elections by placing them in an electoral college template. He claims that cities like Los Angeles and New York “would dominate electoral politics.”

Cities don’t vote, Mr. York, and “large swaths of a vast country” are dirt, and dirt doesn’t vote either.

More importantly, just as the electronic age greatly accelerated the voting process, the internet democratized it. Today a $10 contributor to, say, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is just as likely to live in Casper, Wyo., as Los Angeles.

Under popular elections, every citizen is just as important as the next.


Jack Shakely, Rancho Mirage

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To the editor: At the end of the day, the real question is, if democracy is the goal, what is the fairest way to implement it?

In the 18th century, the logistics of travel and technology, along with the politics of keeping sparsely populated Southern states from jumping ship, may have made direct democracy impossible and required the electoral college as a way to cobble together a national election.


That’s no longer the case. Questions of urban-versus-rural campaigning aside, the answer has to be one person, one vote.

Chris Fite, Spring Valley, Calif.

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To the editor: York predicts that without the electoral college, large cities will dominate national elections.


But if candidates spend more time where there are more people, great! People are voters, right? Not cornfields.

Of course, I could have missed something, and now cornfields like corporations have 1st Amendment rights.

Sarah Tamor, Santa Monica