As of right now — the counting still incomplete — Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have nearly FOUR MILLION more popular votes than Donald Trump. At nearly 73.4 million votes, that’s more than anyone has EVER gotten. Let’s put that fact aside — mandate that it is. If we were like every other democratic country, we, too, would elect our leader directly rather than via a system as bizarre, creaky and loaded with racism as the Electoral College. The Electoral College — this isn’t even controversial — was a direct nod to slavery. It gave the agricultural, less populated slave states undue political power while usurping political power from the more urban majority.
America has lived out of balance ever since. We fought a damned Civil War because of it. We’re still dealing with the consequences today.
Hell, we think a mandate election was close — when it absolutely was not.
How many elections have we had to sweat out over one state’s vote? Why in the name of democracy should one clump of people in one racist county have so much sway over the very people the racist hates in a city at the other end of the country? The EC — and the Senate — make that possible. The Senate also gives way too much weight to too few people — in the most rural parts of the country. While a touch of balance is good and appropriate, this much balance isn’t “balance”.
But then, it was never meant to be balance. The EC was always meant to create un-balance — just like it is today.
If we really want to know what “originalism” feels like in practice, it’s the Electoral College. See how well “originalism” works in a modern country? See how well it tackles our problems and issues? It doesn’t. It was never meant to — because it was never the intention.
Slavery was America’s original sin. The Electoral College was the mechanism that kept the sin in place. If removing it via Constitutional amendment is too arduous and time consuming, we need to support the states that are already hitching their wagons together to, in essence, “ignore” the Electoral College going forward. With the EC no longer a good way to play that state in an election — the state’s votes will be cast as if in a large, general election for POTUS — most if not all gaming of the EC will stop. There’ll be no point anymore.
Imagine getting a real picture of the electorate and the electorate’s voice. Imagine a simplified, more transparent, more direct political process that demands greater accountability to more people.
Imagine having a transformational election that we got to see in all its transformational glory because it wasn’t framed incorrectly by slavery.
Election 2016 wasn’t close. Hillary Clinton WON it by more than three million votes. That’s how other democracies perceived it. Joe Biden will top that.
We’re going to have a dithery conversation in America about how divided and conflicted we are. We’ll think that because the Electoral College game says so. The Electoral College game lies.
We’re not nearly as divided or conflicted as we’re being led to believe. Taking Donald Trump out of the equation will help quiet things. In time, as we all begin to breathe again, reason WILL take over. Never mind the craziest of the crazy. On the day he resigned because of Watergate, Richard Nixon’s approval rating still sat at 29%. It’s just a fact: 30% of this country don’t like the rest of us and never will. We get it.
We’re not talking to them. We’re talking to the rest of America.