|
| |
|
A SYSTEM THAT
DOESN'T SEEM RIGHT
|
|
Relax, Trumpers. This is not a hit piece on the guy who might
be our next President. That's old news. This is a hit piece on the system
that may or may not make that happen.
Here we stand on the most significant Presidential election of
our lifetimes, and my vote means nothing. I happen to vote in California,
and thanks to the Electoral College I might as well vote for Mickey Mouse.
Kamala Harris will win California's electoral votes in a landslide. Yawn.
Only the "Battleground States" of Arizona, Michigan,
Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina and Nevada are in play. The
rest of us, barring a monumental upset, are irrelevant.
The other 43 states are, as the writers on The Daily Show
pointed out, the new country of Whogivesashitastan.
It's happened five times since our Founding Fathers created the
Electoral College---a President elected despite losing the popular
vote---1824, 1876, 1888 and twice in our lifetime. Al Gore lost to George
Bush in 2000 despite having 544,000 more votes and Hilary Clinton lost to
Donald Trump in 2016 with 2.9 million more votes.
Andrew Jackson must have been particularly irked. He trounced
John Quincy Adams in 1824 by more than 10 percentage points in the popular
vote, and still lost when neither won enough electoral votes and the race
was decided by a vote of the House of Representatives.
In the past 200 years more than 700 proposals have been
introduced in Congress to reform or eliminate the Electoral College. Polls
show 63% of Americans want it to go bye-bye. Even Donald Trump is on record
wanting it to go away.
So why is it still here? Because it was part of the original
design of the United States Constitution and therefore requires a
Constitutional amendment to change it. And since that requires a two-thirds
majority in both houses of Congress and ratified by three-fourths of the
States, well, it's not going to happen anytime soon.
In the meantime, my vote for President is essentially wasted. I
realize I need to do my part to secure the electoral votes of California for
the candidate of my choice, but that's a foregone conclusion. I could sit
out the election and it wouldn't matter. That doesn't feel right to me.
We are a representative democracy. We vote for the leaders who
will represent us. One person, one vote. We elect our Senators, our
Congressmen, and our Mayors (don't get me started on Ranked Choice Voting in
San Francisco). Why wouldn't we elect our President in the same manner?
The primary argument for the Electoral College revolves around
the premise that it involves all parts of the country, not just the heavily
populated metro areas. Candidates therefore build campaign platforms
with a national focus.
A decent premise. Unfortunately, that national focus these days
is limited to the Battleground States. Whogivesashitastan is
practically ignored. That's a national focus?
It's also true that the Electoral College was created to
protect the voices of the minority from being overwhelmed by the will of the
majority. Again unfortunately, that premise was rooted in racism.
At the time of the Constitutional Convention, the northern and
southern states had relatively equal populations. The problem was that
one-third of the southern states population were non-voting
slaves. Consequently, delegates from the South were not thrilled
with the idea of a popular vote in presidential elections because their
preferred candidate would most likely lose.
So along came the Electoral College. An argument can be made
that it continues to hamper the minority vote. For example, the highest
concentration of African-Americans is in the South, yet it can be argued
that their preferred candidate (in general) is virtually assured to lose
their home states' electoral votes.
Rooted in racism and an insult to representative democracy, the
Electoral College is a system that has no place in today's America. No
matter who wins next Tuesday's election, I will call foul if the loser wins
the popular vote.
I may yell louder depending on the outcome, but I'll yell
nonetheless.
|
|
|
