Electoral College

Another election season is on us. Once again, I can only become highly depressed watching the usual crap. However, I won't be complaining about the actual elections in this article. My complaints?

Simple. It's the Electoral College itself that I want to piss and moan about. Why? Quite simply, it's a lousy idea. We must be idiots to allow such a bad idea to still be used after all these years. The Electoral College was created during the early years of our country, written into the American Constitution. This was at a time when the only people that could vote where white, land owning, men....many of whom owned slaves.

Typically, you had to own X amount of land before you had the right to vote. Depending on where you lived, the amount of land you had to own before being able to vote varied. Yeah, great way of establishing a Democratic Republic. Before anyone gets anal, we're more of a Democratic Republic  then anything else. I'll probably get more into that point on another article.

Anywho, you had to own so much land before having the right to vote. If you were a woman, freed black, Native American or any other group, it didn't matter if you owned land. You simply had no voice on anything. The only people that really had a say in the matter was those that wanted to make sure that government operated in a fashion favorable to them. Not any different then having the British barking orders at us.

Eventually, voting rights would expand to women, minorities, so on and so on. Only thing that managed to stay the same was the Electoral College. This leaves an important question to ask.

What is the Electoral College? The Electoral College is an institution that elects the President and Vice-President every four years. Citizens don't directly vote for the candidates. We only vote for the electors, who, in turn, pledge to vote for the presidential and vice-presidential candidates.

Electors are apportioned among the 50 states, as well as DC. DC wasn't even included in this until the 23rd Amendment included them in the process. DC currently gets three votes, equal to the least populous states.

It should be pointed out that each state gets a different amount of electors. That is based off how many people your state has in Congress. This favors larger states like California, Texas, and New York. States like Alaska, Montana, North & South Dakota, and Wyoming only get the minimum, which is currently three.

Let's work with this, for a moment. When you vote for your local mayor, county commissioner, state representative or your federal Senators, you get to vote directly for the person of your choice. You can vote for anyone on the ballot that you damn well please. Most offices have people that actually have the people vote for it directly.

The Presidency is the exception. You only vote for people who do the actual voting. I can't recall when they actually do their voting, but it's their votes that actually count. They actually vote on the Monday after the second Wednesday in December in their respective state capitals. They don't actually meet as one group.

Now comes a point of bullshit. In a large majority of states, an elector isn't required to vote for the person whom they've pledge to vote for.  This is known as a Faithless Elector. An elector typically votes for the person who won in the state in question. Twenty-four states have laws that prohibit this. I'm not aware of anyone actually voting for an opposing candidate. As far as I'm aware of, those that are pledged to a specific candidate have always voted for that specific candidate.

Then, we have unpledged electors. Quite simply, the unpledged elector is an elector who hasn't pledged to vote for any candidate and can vote for whomever they please.

This is where I have serious issues. A small group of people will meet in their state capitals to determine who's going to be our next President and Vice-President. The American people don't actually vote for the candidates. This goes directly back to the days where the average person was viewed as nothing but incompetent morons. I don't disagree that some people will have idiotic reasons for voting. Most people are smart enough to make decisions for themselves.

Most people will probably wonder why I give a crap about this. Let's start with the obvious. The popular vote, under the current system, means nothing. In 1824, electors in six states were appointed by their state legislators. In 1876, 1888, and 2000, the winner of the Electoral College vote failed to get the popular vote.

I don't know about you, but if my vote is going to mean nothing, why am I bothering to vote? If someone else can determine who's going to be in charge, my vote is nothing more then a huge waste of time.

This sort of thing can't be good for voter turn-out. There's no incentive to vote for most people since the political parties are so powerful in each state. When you get a state like Minnesota, Democratic candidates typically fair pretty well because of how much influence they have in the state. Same thing applies for Republicans in states, such as Texas. In states like that, the respective candidates are almost guaranteed to get the votes from the electors.

Swing states will typically see higher turn-outs, since one party doesn't have any real advantage over the other.

Also, I'd like to ask about the voting rights of the American territories. Despite being affected by American policy, territories like Puerto Rico, Guam, US Virgin Islands and others don't get a say in Presidential elections. Doesn't help that they don't get votes in Congress, either.

Now that I think of it, I'll leave the complaints on those points for another article. Speaking of articles, I feel like I'm getting long winded. So, I'll end this by stating that I'd rather have the Presidential elections determined by popular vote. I'm of the view that this is the fairest way to handle presidential elections.