I read in the news today that Connecticut has passed a law giving the state’s electoral college votes to the presidential candidate who gets the most votes nationwide. And it’s not the first state to do so. Ten states and the District of Columbia are already on board.
The states are California, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.
Why isn’t there a bigger fuss about this?
Yes, I know, there are no porn stars involved, no fast talking Trump shills making fools of themselves on television. But hello. This is important stuff.
We’re talking about a major change.
I’m sure you know by now that Trump is president because the Founding Fathers cooked up a scheme to tip the balance of power toward landed gentry like themselves. They didn’t trust the common people – especially urban common people – to choose the nation’s leader.
For better or worse, the Constitution is crafted to protect us the people from ourselves. And one of the dangers its framers feared was “mob rule.”
That’s why they created a Republic, not a Democracy.
That was then, though. This is now. To me, anyway, “Republics” are too complex for the modern world, especially in a country of more than 300 million people.
Now, “we the people” demand a better deal. We resent being cheated out of pur choice for president. And when a candidate loses by nearly 3 million votes nationwide, it’s insulting to have him sitting in the Oval Office
Of course, you will notice that only deep-blue states have joined the movement to – in effect – shove the Electoral College out of our way. I don’t expect Trump’s minions to climb aboard any time soon.
Furthermore, the Electoral College was created partly to placate the South, and the mentality that prevailed in the Old South lives on surreptitiously today.
But there’s hope.
For one thing, now that Americans have had a taste of Trump, they’re a lot less likely to want him as a steady diet. So I expect the midterms will bring widespread change in legislatures from sea to shining sea.
And under the Founding Fathers’ own rules, a candidate doesn’t need to win all of the states to get elected, just enough to collect 270 electoral college votes. So the Democrats need only win a few more state legislatures to bring America’s presidential elections into the 21st century.
That’s one more reason to get out and vote in November, folks!
