But wait! You might say, won't abolishing the electoral college and voting directly
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for president cause candidates to spend all their time in big cities? That wouldn't fair
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to most Americans either.
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This sounds like a reasonable fear, but ignores the mathematical reality of population distribution.
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There are 309 million people in the United States, only 8 million of which live in New
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York, the largest city by far. That's 2.6% of the total population. But after New York,
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the size of cities drops fast.
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LA has 3.8 million and Chicago has 2.7 but you can't even make it to the tenth biggest
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city, San Jose before you're under a million people.
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These top ten cities added together are only 7.9% of the popular vote hardly enough to
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win an election.
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And even winning the next 90 biggest cities in the United States all the way down to Spokane
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is still not yet 20% of the total population.
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So unless there's a city with a few hundred million people hiding somewhere in America
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that's been left out of the census, the idea, that a candidate can just spend their campaign
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Jetting between New York, LA and Chicago while ignoring everyone else and still become president
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is mathematically ludicrous.