Letters: A way to reform Electoral College

The liberal website PoliticsUSA said Trump’s refusal to attend the daily briefings is grounds for the Electoral College to nullify the election because it indicates Trump “intends to violate his oath of office” to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”.

On the surface, it might appear doubtful that reforming the Electoral College will generate much momentum.

It is hardly some relic of the past, having proved itself increasingly useful as our population has become more politically polarized and demographically diverse.

Wesoky had argued that voters didn’t choose a president on November 8, only electors who had the right to vote their conscience.

Pearson said presidential candidates routinely ignore as many as 40 states, as with the recent campaign.

This, apparently, they can do, though some states might impose penalties.

In the case of Baca and Nemanich, who are both Democrats, they sought to encourage Republican electors nationwide to pick a third-party candidate, and offered to cast their Democratic votes for a consensus candidate, the Denver Post said.

Enough citizens working in the media must acknowledge the existence of the Electoral College to inspire enough other citizens to call their state assembly members, contact their electors, march on their state capitols and demand that the Electoral College fulfill its suddenly crucial duty of oversight.

Alternatives to Winner Take All?

Leaders and officials around the world were both shocked and hopeful after Donald Trump surged to victory over Hillary Clinton in the us presidential election last month, according to Time.

Of course, even with this process, one can imagine all sorts of fantastical ways in which the vote could be altered: Postal workers swapping the results before they reach government hands, thieves breaking into the Senate mailroom, U.S. Postal Service trucks getting hijacked, the archivist getting paid off, and so on.

So, a candidate who wins by a mere 51 percent gets all the electoral votes. But he added our system is set up to slow things down, that the founders hoped avoiding reactionary moves would help the country make the most well thought out decisions possible. There are several proposals as well as examples in regards to the aforementioned. While there are indeed certain drawbacks to these changes and several reasons why specific individual states oppose such, there are none that would negate their consideration if we are to stay true to the fundamental vision many hold of our republic.

Most alarming, however, has been the effort by some to intimidate and coerce electors duly designated in a handful of states to change their vote when they cast them in less than three weeks.

“It does allow for the smaller states to essentially have a little bit more of a voice”, said Lara Brown, associate professor and director of the political management at George Washington University. The rest of us were bystanders, or fly-over states. Thus in 1913, at the height of the Progressive Era, they pushed through both the Sixteenth Amendment’s income tax, which vastly expanded federal power, and the Seventeenth Amendment’s direct election of Senators, which reduced the power of state legislatures. That is why we saw a giant red blob (Republican) on the electoral map between the East Coast and the Pacific Rim.