>Personally, I like the electoral college, I think there are good reasons for it, I want it to survive. But I know that an AWFUL lot of people don't agree with me. I don't know that a challenge to those paper ballots would be as important or defensible a point without that national popular vote issue hanging over folks' heads.

I too agree with some electoral college concepts, and hesitate to just toss it out because of the current (but still very rare) occurrence. The solution I've heard advocated that best makes sense (and is perhaps easiest to implement - well, easier than an Amendment, that is), is to retain the electoral college, but allocate votes within state, as Nebraska & Maine do now. That is, each CD (congressional district) gets one electoral vote from each district's winning presidential vote, and a state's aggregate popular vote winner gets the 2 extra Senatorial electoral votes. Thus states like FL would have about 10-15 votes for each candidate, for example.

This would retain much of the Constituional spirit of the college), but in theory it would be immensely more difficult to arrive at a "split-decision" of popular vs. electoral than the current "winner-takes-all" system in 48 states and DC, since the electoral votes will reflect and are assigned at a much closer level to the actual popular vote. Convincing the states to implement this method might not be terribly difficult, since a) two already do it, and b) a time of crisis like this provides a good impetus.