“Is it a real college? Do you know anyone with a degree from there? I’m just saying, they must not have a football team because I’ve never heard of ’em.”
— the Electoral College, as described by the internet
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Upfront: I know who won the election based on the rules in place and agreed upon prior to voting. I am not advancing protest, vote contesting, “he’s not my president” talk, etc. No do-overs.
Having said that: Fuck the Electoral College.
The majority of voters wanted a Democrat in four of the past five presidential elections, but the Electoral College has given us only two.
The Electoral College made sense back when it was created, when some poor asshole had to poll his neighbors then hop on a horse for several days to get to the capitol and report how the folks back in Boomtown, Nebraskahoma voted.
Two and a half centuries later, we’ve put a man on the goddamned moon, but we’re still counting votes like we have to wait on them to be delivered with next week’s Pony Express packet.
Despite my tech-based metaphors, a better system doesn’t even require a highly advanced voting process — online voting, brain scans, whatever.
Just count the votes. All the goddamned votes, not only the ones that sort neatly into an 18th Century accounting system.
This isn’t even a burden, considering, by law, we count all the votes anyway.
No, really. The presidential election was two days ago, and some areas are still tallying. Hell, many of them won’t have a certified official count for another week or better as they await the arrival of overseas military votes.
We already count all the votes even though the Electoral College victory margin is known and there aren’t enough votes to change it.
We want to know, we need to know, just how many people actually preferred the Electoral College loser to the candidate who will get inaugurated in January.
We count and count, regardless of the fact the final totals are ultimately just footnotes to a foregone conclusion.
New proposal: Screw the antiquated filtering system; winner of most votes wins.
We can do better. If we care about democracy, we have to.
lastgreypoet 