Jonathan Eckstein's Letter to the Editor in the New York Times

This letter was written in response to a letter published a week earlier. That letter claimed that the USA needs to retain the electoral college to prevent larger-scale version of the 2000 Florida election mess. In my letter, I'm trying to say that such an argument is not tenable.

Scanned version:

Text:

In a Dec. 3 letter a writer raises the specter of a national recount -- the present Florida mess replayed on a nationwide scale -- in defense of the electoral college system.

While such a situation would indeed be worse than the kind of one-state dispute we are in now, a simple popular vote system would also make it significantly less likely to occur. Improvement and standardization of voting procedures and technology, which are long overdue, would further reduce the probability of such a nightmare.

We could then get back to the real issue: one person, one vote.