[quote=zk]
I’m not sure what you mean by massively (nor am I sure why you seem to imply that it’s not important what happens when a candidate wins by a solid but not massive margin), but it would be very easy to win the popular vote in a 3-candidate race by a solid margin and fail to get 50% of the electoral college.
To have congressmen choose a president is really bad. To have them choose a president in a way that a Wyomingan’s vote essentially counts 65 times as much as a Californian’s is a travesty of democracy.[/quote]
It’s happened once in the country’s history so it’s not common. Jackson won the popular vote by a significant margin but congress elected Quincy Adams. I wouldn’t call it a travesty though. It split the one party system of the Democratic-Republican party into 2 parties. Jackson won the 1828 election by a landslide. In some respects it woke the voters up. Maybe that’s exactly what we need in our current political process.
