Although thousands of people protested the 2018 presidential election in Russia, expressing their disapproval of Viadimir Putin's leadership, with some shouting "Putin is a thief," some 68 percent of the eligible voters in Russia went to the polls and elected Putin in a landslide, giving him 75 percent of the votes, enabling him to serve a fourth term as President of Russia, notwithstanding that there were seven other candidates in the race.
       In the 2016 presidential election in the United States, only  58 percent of eligible voters went to the polls. Donald J. Trump was elected to be President of the United States with less than 50 percent of the popular votes. He did receive more votes in the Electoral College than his opponent Hilliary Clinton. The Electoral College nullifies or makes void the popular vote, one vote for one person with equal value. There is no place for the Electoral College, which is not a college at all, in the Twenty-first Century. Withot it Hilliary Clinton, not Donald J. Trump, woud be President.
       Russia's first Democratic election was in 1991, 27 years ago. The first Democratric election in the  United States was in 1778, 230 years ago. The question can be asked, "Whose election, Russian's or the United States'  is more democratic?"
     Just because the Founding Fathers, with the absence of the Founding Mothers, if they existed, created the Electoral College as a method of choosing the president of the United States does not indicate that this system should be perpetuated. The Founding Fathers also included slavery in the Constituton stating that an African American was three-fifth of a person, a practice that continued until after the Civil War and enactment of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments which declared that "All persons born or naturalizdd in the United States are  whole persons."
      Some Americans, arrogantly and much too often, boast of America's exceptionalism. It may  be well for Americans to recognize that there are other countries that are exceptional in some things of value, including not having an Electoral College to elect a President, providing Health care for all their citizens, having gun control, which the lack thereof, accounted for 34,000 deaths in America in 2017, not being the world's number one jailer, having more people incarcerated than any other country in the world.  And just maybe the United States can learn something from Russia about how to elect a President.

Copyright 2018 by Uriah J. Fields