As I have another round of medical meetings today I needed something easy to write about and what better subject than the EC?

We are mere days away from out trip to the polls and this year the focus, as always, will be on the Electoral College.

Most readers of IST know that I am not a big fan of the EC….I think it has outlived any usefulness.

But in case someone is still not aware of my feelings I can help out….

That Antiquated Electoral College Con

As long as I am going on about the EC let’s look at a little history….

The United States is the only democracy in the world where a presidential candidate can get the most popular votes and still lose the election. Thanks to the Electoral College, that has happened five times in the country’s history. The most recent examples are from 2000, when Al Gore won the popular vote but George W. Bush won the Electoral College after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, and 2016, when Hillary Clinton got more votes nationwide than Donald Trump but lost in the Electoral College.

The Founding Fathers did not invent the idea of an electoral college. Rather, they borrowed the concept from Europe, where it had been used to pick emperors for hundreds of years.

As a scholar of presidential democracies around the world, I have studied how countries have used electoral colleges. None have been satisfied with the results. And except for the U.S., all have found other ways to choose their leaders.

The Holy Roman Empire was a loose confederation of territories that existed in central Europe from 962 to 1806. The emperor was not chosen by heredity, like most other monarchies. Instead, emperors were chosen by electors, who represented both secular and religious interests.

https://theconversation.com/no-country-still-uses-an-electoral-college-except-the-us-240281

That is right most countries that have tried this system have found it was a waste of time that is with the exception of the US and it fits well with the dominance of the two parties.

Then there was the debate on the system….

At the Constitutional Convention held in Philadelphia in 1787, discussions about how to choose the President were contentious. Because of the winding road the delegates took to reach the solution, the origins of the Electoral College are usually described as being either about the delegates’ distrust of the people or as a means to perpetuate slavery.

Actually, the Electoral College was about both and more. Examining the perspective of John Dickinson, a delegate from Delaware and an architect of the Electoral College who neither distrusted the people nor supported slavery, sheds light on the Framers’ intentions and how we might proceed at this moment in American politics.

Dickinson had extensive political experience before attending the Constitutional Convention. He had served as a legislator, member of Congress, and governor for Pennsylvania and Delaware. He wrote more for the Founding than any other figure, including the first draft of America’s first constitution, the Articles of Confederation (1776). He also advocated women’s rights and was an abolitionist. By 1787, he had freed all those he had enslaved and attempted to secure passage of an abolition bill in Delaware.

https://time.com/7028656/john-dickinson-electoral-college/

Then why can we not rid ourselves of this (expletive) system?

The electoral college is one of the most unusual parts of any democracy in the world. The bizarre system was invented as a compromise among the Founding Fathers more than two centuries ago – so why are we still stuck with it?

Electoral College started as a concession to small states that didn’t want to be overrun by the residents of more populous states.

“These states were really more concerned about being autonomous actors than they were about being one union,” she said. “So the electoral college was essentially a political deal, you know, to get them all together because otherwise you wouldn’t have gotten all those small states to join on.”

Kamarck said that throughout the 20th century, the winner of the popular vote always won the electoral college. But in the 21st century, the popular vote winner has lost the electoral college in two out of six elections so far.

What changed? As agriculture was automated, people gradually moved out of the middle of the country to urban areas on the coasts – but the distribution of electoral votes hasn’t been shifted to accurately reflect each state’s current population, leaving the biggest states in the union woefully underrepresented.

https://www.audacy.com/knxnews/news/local/can-we-ever-get-rid-of-the-electoral-college

Every four years I revisit my distaste for the EC and it still remains an unnecessary part of our election process.

I know it will never change but it feels good to vent once in awhile.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”