The United States of America is “special” but not always in a the good sense of that word. One of the weirder aspects of our system of government is the Electoral College. In the past, some other countries used a similar system, but now no country still uses an electoral college − except the US.
I have no idea if civics is still taught in K–12 schools, but I don’t remember hearing anything about the Electoral College’s racist origins during my time there back in the Jurassic period.
Elie Mystal has written a great essay about popular myths relating to the EC that I’d strongly recommend you read: A Lesson in Basic Civics for People Who Stubbornly Defend the Electoral College
There have been many attempts to abolish the EC, the furthest that one got in the 20th century was in 1969:
But that petered out and died. The U.S. Constitution is very hard to amend.
Yes, the Electoral College is deeply anti-democrat. Yes, it should be abolished by amending the U.S. Constitution. No, that’s not going to happen any time soon. For better or worse, we’re stuck with it for the foreseeable future.
But I’m going to play Devil’s Advocate and suggest one scenario that could potentially be a chaotic result of switching to an “obviously better” system of electing our Presidents based solely on the popular vote — an extremely close vote tally.
We actually had one not all that long ago. In 2000, Al Gore got just a half a percent more popular votes than Bush 2.0 did but got the win from SCOTUS because of Florida’s Electoral votes. Officially, Bush got 2,912,790 votes there and Gore got 2,912,253 votes. We all remember the “hanging chads” fiasco but it’s quite possible that the disproportionate rejection of Black votes was what really tipped it in Bush’s favor. But officially a 537 vote difference decided an election in which over 100,000,000 Americans voted.
Because of the anti-democratic nature of the Electoral College, the only real chaos was in Florida. But what if a future election were decided by a nation-wide popular vote? Suppose Candidate A got 85,637,915 votes nationally and Candidate B got 85,637,378 votes. Might not there be legal challenges in every state? Imagine the chaos that might ensue.
I do still think that the EC should be abolished, but we would need to understand that there’s at least the possibility that we’d be jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
Oh well, as the saying goes, it is what it is.
Tomorrow is the big day so I might as well throw caution to the wind and peer deeply into my slightly cracked crystal ball and see what it says. Go ahead and laugh.
I may end up being wildly wrong but my crystal ball is calling for a blowout with Harris leading Trump by more than ten million votes in the popular tally. In the Electoral College, another rout, winning all 7 of the “swing state” elections. And maybe even winning Florida too. A map of my crystal ball’s guesstimate:
Want a free Hive account? Join Hive using my referral link.
On civics class:
I was an exchange student in the US back in 1997, where I also signed up for "government" class, due to sheer curiosity. I remember very well how the Electoral College was presented: It's not perfect, by far, but it's the best, or rather only feasible option for a country such as the US. (No detail on what this 'such as' meant, the spacial distances, the size of its population, being subdivided into states and counties, etc.) Not one word on its connection to slavery, but a strong and repetitive emphasis on how it guarantees fairness for rural states, which already seemed a bit suspicious to me.
That would be good. Interesting background, thank you.
I see it as a blowout too. To me the question isn't if Trump loses, nor is the question whether he will accept the results or not (he almost certainly won't), the question is is the other side ready for all the attacks of "fake election results" that will pop up from Trump loyalists from the moment the polls close, all night, and probably for at least a few days, and the resulting challenges.
I think electoral college helped Trump in his first tenure
In the end, it doesn't matter. Joe Biden is not running the show, nor will Kamala Harris.
@tipu curate
Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 45/75) Liquid rewards.