“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people,
who have a right … and a desire to know.”
John Adams, 1765
As the election season heats up I look ahead at the possibility of a repeat of the 2016 election. I find myself worrying that a popular vote win for Kamala Harris would mean diddly squat when it came to the votes of members of the Colo-rectal College (aka Electoral College) and I decided it was time to refresh my education as to how, and why, that happens.
According to the National Archives website (archives.gov/electoral-college/about), the Founding Fathers created the Electoral College “as a compromise between the election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens.” Each state has one elector for each member in the House plus two senators. The District of Columbia is allocated three electors and is included when the term “State” is used as a whole.
Presidential candidates have their own “slates,” or group of electors, who are chosen by the candidate's political party. However the Constitution does not provide many guidelines as to how those electors are selected or what their responsibilities are. According to the National Archives:
“The U.S. Constitution contains very few provisions relating to the qualifications of electors. Article II, section 1, clause 2 provides that no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector. As a historical matter, the 14th Amendment provides that State officials who have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States or given aid and comfort to its enemies are disqualified from serving as electors.”
Which leads me to wonder how someone who has committed such offenses can still run for President.
But I digress...
Other details regarding choosing electors are left up to the individual states, most of which have a “winner-take-all” system that awards all electors to the Presidential candidate who wins the popular vote. In other words, if your vote is not part of the state majority then your vote is null in the national.
More than 700 proposals have been introduced in Congress to reform and even eliminate the Electoral College. More so than on any other issue. The American Bar Association holds that the system is “archaic” but many political scientists support its continuation. Perhaps this is because it would allow more opportunity for a third party to make a significant showing, and wouldn't that be the proverbial monkey wrench in the works? But isn't that like denying rights to vote for whom you choose?
The Colo-rectal College, excuse me, the Electoral College, is not a system that benefits America. It allows too much power to those with agendas not shared with large populations of political constituents and opens the door to shady “good ole boy” type dealings. We saw that most recently in 2016 when Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a substantial margin but ultimately lost the election to Donald Trump who had held more sway over the electors who were supposed to vote the way the majority of the voters want. Obviously, that wasn't the case. Somehow, someway, the Colo-rectal College came up with more supposedly representative “popular” votes than the actual popular vote would indicate. There is definitely something rotten in the system that would allow that to happen.
The United States was founded on the notion of equal rights. Our Constitution guarantees those rights and over the years amendments have been made that are supposed to define and enforce those rights. The Electoral College does not reflect the ideology of equality. What was created with good and honorable intention has been warped and distorted until it now gives preferential power to those who know how to manipulate the law. It's time for the voting public to stand up for their voice to be heard en mass, not in part. It's time to reinstate Democracy for all Americans regardless of party affiliation. It's time to vanquish the Electoral College.
c. 2024
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OK, I'm going to stop here with the digestive verbiage, but I agree with your sediments completely! ;))
You may recall that Jimmy Carter lost his majority vote to Ronald Reagan in 1980 because of the electoral college, and more recently, Al Gore lost to George W. Bush. Leading us to war, destabilizing the world more, instead of spending that money on turning around global warming clearly indicated by scientific fact, but poorly presented by Gore.
Since the 1960s civil rights and other reforms brought by the Democrats, Republican planned their course ahead, primarily by gerrymandering congressional districts, enabling them to have the upper hand when it came to the so-called, college without qualifications.
When I came to my Southwest Houston home in 1981, my district representative was failed exterminator Republican, Tom Daly, the party guy of the Congress who eventually became the gerrymandering guy because he wanted NASA in his district while he still lived in Sugar Land, many miles away. I ended up in a democratic, predominantly black, district stretching all the way to the east side of downtown over 20 miles away. While Tom dropped in my mailbox all his hand-gladding and dealmaking newsletter, not his legislation.
Al Green, my Democratic representative since, was the first to file a resolution to Impeach Trump and also has made a strong effort in trying to eliminate the electoral college. His emails to me do not ask for money but inform me of the bills that he is writing and championing for the people. Why, in most elections, he stays unopposed for doing what a representative should do. Tom Daly was convicted of fraud, I believe. Then later, it was overturned by Republican influencers… Judges.
The Senate is also archaic. For some reason, although they opposed British rule, they modeled our Congress like the British Parliament with the House of Lords and House of Commons. We should have no lords in this country. And recently, senatorial stonewalling behavior seems to bear out why.
And then there is the Supreme Court, appointed for life…Like kings.
Ron