I think Maine does have the right idea - it merges the spirit of the electoral college with real-life results an actual election puts forth. By assigning a percentage of electoral points of a state based on the parallel percentage of actual votes, then every voter's vote does mean something.
I live in Illinois which was a forgone Kerry state. As such, I voted only out of a sense of civic duty, not because I felt my vote (for Kerry) would actually make a difference. My mother, on the other hand, faced the same situation as Kathy B - voting for Kerry in a state that is heavily Republican. As such, she wasted the hour she stood in line because her vote essentially meant nothing. What the system does is tell anyone who might go against the majority in their particular state to just stay home on voting day or move to another state where their candidate has a fighting chance (which looks to be Ohio, Florida, and a few other key swing states). I find it highly ironic that the message to "get out the vote" is so big yet quite often, an individual's vote means nothing in the end.
To say that it is only because we "lost" that we are unhappy with an antiquated system seems a bit unfair. If we were to live by all of the systems and rules set down by our founding fathers back in 1776, I wouldn't even be able to vote because I'm a woman. One of the things so wonderful about our governmental system is its ability to change and grow as society changes and grows. Certainly Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and John Adams never imagined that some day someone would be voting via computer or that a pervasive, far reaching media would mean that a candidate could simultaneously campaign in all 50 states(heck, they didn't even imagine 50 states). Yes, the fear that a candidate would set up shop in Philadelphia or New York City or Boston, before travel was so much easier, was real and there was a need for a system to prevent a candidate from doing just that. You can't tell me that if, today, a candidate only focused on the needs of huge population centers such as NYC, LA and Chicago, the rest of the country would not express their displeasure with a no vote.
It's 2004, not 1804. Just because a system once held good reasons for being doesn't mean that it should continue to be used if those reasons no longer apply. That's called tradition, which IMO isn't very applicable when in comes to matters of such great importance as presidential elections.
Lynn
