If there is no electoral college, the largest cities in the US will effectively control the election. Or the three or five largest States. The rest of us would not count.
      With Presidential campaigns running at about $1 billion, and roughly 1% of the population controlling 99% of our wealth, who actually makes it to the November election is also a problem for most of us.
      Bernie Sanders and our President-elect seem to have bucked this last problem. The Fourth Estate helped both of them, I suppose, although with vastly different tactics being employed by the each. Both used social media very effectively. showing that the Fourth Estate has changed!
      Another point is that all those polls never got it right, did they? So maybe we poor, supposedly disenfranchised voters do get a say after all. Or maybe hackers got away with it . I know I got it wrong. I thought Hillary would win 35 states. Most elections have been a choice between the lesser of two evils, but personally, this time there sure was not much of that "lesser" part.
      I think the Electoral College should remain. We are a Republic, not a democracy. States Rights and all that! Oh, and no, California cannot secede. Remember, our new President-elect is from New York! But as I live in a town of under 5000 souls located in The Natural State, I can always hope that CA, NY, & TX go away. Go CANYTXit!

I am an Oper on the AT&T Undernet IRC Server irc2.att.net, and a channel op in #macintosh, where Espy was a regular. Espy was one of the first people I ran into on IRC. He was one of the rocks of our channel. By that I mean he was highly respected; when he spoke we all listened. I knew him for several years, and thought he was much older, as he was such a level-headed person. His knowledge was so deep, it often seemed like he knew everything! To us he was the voice of reason, and he had a sense of humor and wit that could make us all laugh. He helped me install my first copy of Linux, and of course it was debian. I still have the CD he told me to get.
The regulars of #macintosh are passing around an email which we would like to send to his family, as many of us knew him for a lot of years. If someone knows how to email his family, please send it to me. We intend to send just the one email, and I will not share the address, if given it.

The Undernet, and particularly the #macintosh channel, will not be the same without Espy, and we mourn his loss deeply. We console ourselves with the knowledge he is in a better place, where the the chains of the terrible disease he suffered no longer bind him.