The Electoral College Debacle - America's Original Sin

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Americans are exhorted to believe that the Electoral College is a divinely-inspired civic cannon, the understanding of which, while impossible to contemplate, is nevertheless a sacrosanct animus of the politically immaculate conception to which we are commanded to genuflect in November, every fourth year. 

When, by point of fact, it is so much anti-democratic political detritus, created out of whole cloth by the wig-wearing, elitist, neo-aristocrat framers of our republic who cobbled together our commonweal out of the ornery, ignorant, and illiterate North American backwater in an eighteenth century smoke-filled beer-soaked Philadelphia tavern – and who, by point of fact, lived in evermore fear that the great unwashed might actually play to heavy a hand in the appointment of their sovereign.

Now, what with all of the reverence we’re taught about our founding fathers, you’d think they would have made provisions for a federal election. But you would also be wrong. 

You see, there is no such thing as a national election in the United States. So, electing a president requires the cooperation and coordination of fifty separate state elections, each with separate laws, rules, regulations – and inventive histories of voter fraud, suppression, and electoral jury-rigging.

To be fair, the electoral college starts with the practical calculus that apportions the House of Representatives per capita, audited by census every ten years to ensure meticulous representative parity, with the growth and shrinkage of the hustings, while maintaining a constant number of seats – or districts, as it were – that totality currently at 435. 

Note: for the purposes of the Electoral College – an additional voting entity was created in 1961 – with the 23rd Amendment to the Constitution – granting the people of the District of Columbia the privilege of voting for the president – along with three arbitrary electoral votes. The three votes were presumably arrived-at – by ranking D.C. equal to the smallest of the actual states – with one congressional district and two senators – for a total of three (3) electoral votes. 

Yet this Amendment stopped sort of granting statehood with actual elected and voting members of congress – leaving D.C. residents hybrid personae non grata. Today the indicia on D.C. auto license plates ballyhoos: "Taxation Without Representation" – an in-your-face affront to congressional personnel who oversee its affairs.

Thus the congressional district in which one lives – adjusted for strict per capita parity with all other districts – is awarded one electoral vote for the presidency. While the presumption might be that this coveted vote would be cast for the most favored presidential candidate in that district, that is precisely where common sense was maliciously jettisoned.

Our esteemed founders decided that awarding a state’s electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis to the political party with the most votes state-wide would  be a keen idea – thus quite literally disenfranchising all voters for the minority party, no matter how slim or fat the margin within the state.

And to add even greater distance between the voters and the election, EACH ELECTORAL VOTE was decoupled from the ballot box by virtue of its assignment to a surrogate individual – deemed an ELECTOR – appointed by each state – to be cast in fifty separate arcane assemblies and duly forwarded to the sitting vice president of the United States for tabulation. (No, you didn’t miss anything; there is no evidence of logic in this rigmarole.) 

And – are you ready – the appointed electors are not obligated – repeat, are not obligated – to cast their vote for the winner in their state, a reprobation dubbed by the magnificently understated term of art: faithless elector. Now mind you, a few states have legislated dire repercussions for such an affront, but by and large, the act, if exercised, goes altogether unpunished

But our founding fathers weren’t done yet. To skew the math further, they threw in two bonus electoral votes for each state, cast without recourse by the two senators – the original super delegates. Presumably this was political booty for the status of statehood, back when there were only thirteen royal colonies rimming the eastern seaboard. 

Given that state senators were then elected by their respective state legislature, this overt thumb on the political scales made for evermore back room wheeling and dealing at the expense of democracy – the end result, a senate once dubbed the “millionaires club” serving powerful private interests. 

Indeed, under the table shenanigans were so endemic, that progressive reformers rammed through the seventeenth amendment to the constitution in 1913, declaring that U.S. senators be elected by state plebiscite.

But then what to do with the dangling electoral votes allotted to each senator? Rather than scrubbing them along with the regal status of their beneficiaries, it was decided to toss them in to the winner-take-all pool, state-by-state. 

Thus today, they inflate the deck with 100 trump cards, for a total of 538. By this loopy logic, Rhode Island (a miniscule province smaller than most Texas counties) is awarded the same electoral perquisite as California (in its own right, the world’s fifth largest economy). 

Many Teabaggers advocate repeal of the 17th Amendment - banking that a permanent Republican majority would inflate the partisan deck more to the political right.

And oh yes, by dent of the pure orneriness of herding fifty sovereign entities into a single federal coral, to date two states (Nebraska and Maine) have actually revolted from the farce, pealing off with another formula known as proportional representation, whereby they allow each of their congressional districts to cast its own electoral vote, irrespective of their states’ majorities. Yet, having sliced through this folderol with stunning logic, they still toss their two senatorial votes into the winner-take-all pool. 

Then in 2004 Colorado offered up a ballot measure to set its state in an class of its own, whereby its nine electoral votes would be divvied up by the percentage of a party’s popular vote statewide. Apparently too obtuse for the rank and file to parse, it was alas defeated.

The dislocations of all this illogical calculus are so manifest that they are impossible to enumerate, causing the balance of the free world to gape with primate countenance at the stunning prospect of such an anti-democratic rigmarole. Among its more glaring manifestations is to create vast “flyover” geography in the sparsely populated fruited plains, reducing its citizens to irrelevant ciphers; while elevating populous states to the status of bejeweled principalities by virtue of the winner-take-all bonanza. 

Flyover territory's disproportional impact

But perhaps the most egregious of the electoral college’s impact is to erect a firewall against any possibility of a third party contender for the presidency, thus enshrining the Democratic and Republican parties as alternate custodians of a dual American politburo, fundamentally isolated from the consequences of actual governance.

Since campaigning in, and winning, the eleven most populous states summarily puts a presidential candidate over the top, that is, of course, precisely what they do – leaving the rest of the country to eat shit and die. 

Thus, the two reigning political parties have become fat, corrupt, and insufferably tone deaf to the will of the people.

Then there was the heavy arm of the Supreme Court in 2000 (Bush v. Gore) that superseded the state of Florida's clearly constitutional injunction to allocate its own electoral votes - an unambiguous partisan ruling created out of thin air. Thus, for the first time ever the president was selected by the judiciary, not the people.

So what is the solution? Bag the whole electoral college and go to one-person, one vote? While many proffer this as ideal end game, it doesn’t take much imagination to figure out that this would not solve the real problem – that being collapsing campaigning to the most concentrated urban demographics, and leaving the rest of us altogether unsolicited. Thus morons and pundits alike shrug their shoulders.

But, alas, the answer is so obvious, so eloquent, so plain-in-sight that it seems to elude us by virtue of its simplicity: proportional allocation. 

In other words, do away with the winner-take-all state apportionment and allow each congressional district to cast its own vote – and, most importantly, scrub the 100 wild cards altogether.

Thus the electoral college deck would be composed of a 436 equal cards, and politicians would be forced to play a no-trump hand.

But newsflash (09/16/11): The Republican state legislature in Pennsylvania has seized upon this idea of proportional representation - not by virtue of its logic, but on the cold calculus that, if implemented in 2012, their net electoral votes for Obama would be virtually neutralized. Democrats, by contrast, have sent up a howling "foul play" caterwaul.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/state/20110916_Corbett_proposes_changing_how_Pennsylvania_awards_electoral_votes.html 

By contrast - newsflash (09/18/11): The Republican state legislature in Nebraska is scheming to reverse its progressive proportional allocation formula in favor of the winner-take-all formula. The reason: its 2nd congressional district (greater Omaha) voted Democratic in 2008, casting its single electoral vote for Obama. Changing to winner-take-all would deny such an outrage in 2012.

http://www.omaha.com/article/20110918/NEWS01/709189896

These overt partisan reuses looking to further game an already gamed system are case in point to the utter folly of the electoral college and its anti-democratic folderol.

Of course, if applied across the totality of the fifty states, and the District of Columbia – proportional representation would itself be neutralized - in favor of the actual popular vote - congressional district-by-district.

Thus is the imperative for harmonized national election regulations at the federal level. Not likely to happen, we will continue the charade of the party in power at the expense of democracy.

Calhoun, GA 09/17/11 Shitepoke.com