Or 9 voters

Or, if someone gets his way, just 1

No, the President exerts significant control over executive agency policy, and is elected by many more people than that.

The President is elected by the 538 electors of the electoral college.

The ballot is a lie. You're actually voting for an elector, not the President.

In practice, the general voters typically see the electors vote the way the populace in their area voted, but that's not always the case.

> but that's not always the case.

When is that not the case?

I believe it would be a violation of current electoral law for electors to fail to cast votes as apportioned by the results of their state's general election.

In my view, being detached from the outcome of the general election in a state isn't the problem with the electoral college currently (though maybe it was in the past).

Rather, the problem is that the all-or-nothing apportionment of electoral college votes within most states often creates outcomes that wildly diverge from the national popular vote. But I think the idea of splitting up the general election vote tallying by state is a good one, because I think running one giant national vote would be more of a contentious logistical nightmare than it already is.

But if it were up to me, all states would apportion their electoral votes proportionally, and each state would get a lot more votes. That is, say California is allotted 10,000 "electors" and 57.25% of their votes go to one candiate, 39.67% goes to another, and 3.08% to a third, then the electoral college votes would be 5,725, 3,967, and 308, respectively. This would reach outcomes extremely close to a national popular vote, while still using the electoral college in a way that is no less ceremonial than it is today.

See the 2016 election with a number of faithless electors for the most recent example. Some states require electors to vote how the people vote, but not all.

Also, Maine and Nebraska don't always give all the electoral votes to the same candidate. I'm not sure the process in those states, though.

I don't really have much of an opinion on how the election could be better, but there are some interesting ideas.

I wrote my comments specifically with Maine and Nebraska in mind. They don't do exactly what I suggested with a proportional apportionment, but it's closer to that, and better for it. If every state did what they do, the electoral college would be a non-issue.