Because sometimes some teammates are so unresponsive and plain bad that there's 0 point in being stuck in a lost game for more than 20 minutes.

Failure to change only promotes toxic gameplay and behavior.

I think any kind of early surrendering should only be an option if your team is really playing poorly. Some kind of flag would have to be set like if a certain summoner has more than a number of deaths at the early surrender mark, or if the team as a whole has a certain number. Maybe the condition would be like a mercy rule judgement. I think early surrendering is a good idea but if there isn't a condition like any of the ones I mentioned, then it can be abused just as hard as in game trolling.

I personally have always wondered why the surrender timer was not in some way refreshed / reduced based on if a player drops/quits.

I have played games before where one summoner never connects... and another drops. Having to play a 20min match of 3v5 can be fun, but I would have honestly preferred to play another game.

I support this but there should also be a condition, like the guy above me mentioned, that depends on whether or not a teammate has disconnected or has a huge ping.

the main problem i see with this is that it is still possible to win a game with no nexus turrets.

It's also possible to be struck by lightning twice while walking down the street.
Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjI8AxZnrx8
I'm really sick of that counter argument. There are lots of things that are possible yet unlikely to occur. The game is balanced around 5v5 (or 3v3) matchmaking, so when the game is not a 5v5 match, the odds are stacked against you. I've won a 4v5 or two in my day, but I've lost exponentially more. It doesn't feel good to be the loser or winner in an unbalanced match. It reminds me of the episode of South Park where Cartman enters the Special Olympics...

That's only a POSSIBLE, not PROBABLE or LIKELY.

Such a situation where all of one side's turrets are gone and the others' are all present is only winnable if it's late-game, and then the "losing" side manages to repeatedly win teamfights without a single loss.

This is something that could be found an analogy with real-world sports, such as football. If one team's down 35-0 at the beginning of the 4th quarter, it's POSSIBLE for the team that's behind to win... But not very likely at all. The winning team already has the momentum: what they're doing is obviously working while the losing team hasn't found such a thing, and it's not only easier to stay what you're doing than to find something better, the losing team has to find something that works SO WELL, they can actually come out of their deficit before it's too late.

Games don't happen in a vaccum: it doesn't have the odds of going any which way regardless of the current situation. The context does dictate what's likely and what's not. That's why surrenders exist at all: whle ANY game is technically winnable, if the losing team feels that nothing has gone right for them, and they just don't think they could get anything to work to reverse their fortune, then they should have all rights to avoid wasting further time. They shouldn't have to keep banging their head against the wall under the assumption that they could still win. "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result."

Even if you could surrender the moment a player disconnects, the team can still vote no.

The only thing you accomplish by making 9 players play a game for 20 minutes when 1 player never connected and the team of 4 wants to quit is some sort of sadistic torture.

These changes I think should be made:

A ranked teams team should not have any surrender time limit. Since it's their team and their loss, if they want to surrender at 1 minute, they should be able to.

B. If someone doesn't respond yes or no to the surrender question, it should automatically default to YES instead of no. That way trolls that go AFK can't stop a surrender from passing because if they don't hit no it'll automatically register them as a yes vote.

Or you can press 'no' when it's time to surrender. It is your call after all.