Ciboski: Keep the Electoral College

“After the Supreme Court decision in 2000, I continued to support the Electoral College because the original objective was to tie the states together”, he said.

“The abolition of the Electoral College is virtually beyond reach, requiring a constitutional amendment with super-majority approval requirements”, said Jim Weatherby of Boise, a longtime political professor, and consultant. In living memory, the Electoral College victory has now twice overturned the popular vote in favor of the Republican candidate. Coincidentally it has always been the Democrat who got the short end of the stick each time there’s been a popular and electoral vote split. The compromise for an electoral college was to prevent Virginia from dominating every election. ME and Nebraska each assign two electoral votes to whichever candidate gets the most votes statewide, and then awards one vote for each Congressional district that a candidate carries. The slave-state “forefathers” refused to agree with one-man-one-vote for presidential elections.

Second, Trump’s Twitter behavior is rash and certainly not presidential. Is it any wonder that Virginians held the presidency 32 out of next 36 years?

Congressman Emanuel Celler, D-New York, introduced House Joint Resolution 681, a proposed Constitutional amendment to eliminate the Electoral College and replace it with a national popular vote victor for the presidency. “It’s not a simple one choice is all good and the other is all bad”.

The founders knew that passions could sway the public.

Only by starting with these assumptions did the Electoral College make sense.

Georgia introduced a county unit system in 1917, presumably based on the Electoral College. We have seen how they shove their agendas through like a son pushing his grumpy mother’s wheelchair over anyone standing between them and The Lion King box office. Each would be equally qualified virtuous gentlemen. The Senate and the Electoral College both stop that from happening-or at least limit it. They wouldn’t go to New Hampshire, which has a population of little more than one million.

Yet nearly immediately after ratification of the Constitution, reality obliterated the Founders’ plan.

Why would any other system be necessary?

To be fair to Trump, the 2016 campaign was waged on the Electoral College battle front.

Thankfully, we’ll never have to find out. The Trump camp wants each state to certify its election results without delay, so the 538 electors can meet and officially elect him president. Your state’s entitled allotment of electors equals the number of members in its Congressional delegation: one for each member in the House of Representatives plus two for your Senators.

The US was a coalition of sovereign states.

Advocates of the electoral college say it protects minority groups and voters living in rural areas. Candidates would concentrate heavily in California, New York, and Chicago. “It is the principle enshrined in the Electoral College”. Instead, they vote for a slate of electors from each party who then gather in December to select the next president. You’ll learn that economic trends, social upheaval, stock market cycles, and more… are all connected to powerful geopolitical currents that most of us aren’t even aware of.

Over time the Electoral College has become increasingly dysfunctional. Wyoming has three electors and California 55.

Forget the primaries. Anybody who thinks he/she could get 15-20 percent of the popular vote nationally would be running. The African-American struggle for the franchise and the struggle for the popular vote to be paramount in choosing our president have converged. In 1803 Americans merged the Electoral College, an institution that only made sense in a world without partisanship and organized political parties, with a political process and a political culture based on partisan conflict organized by political parties. That struggle would have taken place across America, rather than just in Florida. Not to mention all those less urbanized states that see themselves as having nothing in common with people who think policies on everything from rifles to bike lanes should be decided in Brooklyn and San Francisco.