Electoral College

TJ Hyland - November 8, 2020

The Electoral College is a system intended to give wealthy landowners greater voting power than everyone else. According to the 2020 census data compared to the voting results, Texas has 322% less voting impact per voter than Wyoming residents. It's time to abolish the electoral college because empty land is not human life and shouldn't get to have a say in our democracy.

Governments were never created for the people unless we take into account that those who were considered people during the government's creation excluded all non-white people and women. Now that the definition of who is valued a person has broadened, the government no longer serves the people. Conservatives aim to keep it that way, but the rest of us desire to change it. We aim to change a system that fundamentally exploits people and creates a system of poverty, abuse, criminalization for being poor or homeless, and then exploits prison labor to maintain slavery.

According to the constitution, we are free to alter and shape the government to whatever means bring the most happiness to all. However, we still have to battle conservative rhetoric that aims to dehumanize us always. According to the constitution, we even have the right to abolish the government and establish a new one, but all we're asking is inclusion.

Let's talk about how it got started. The Electoral College is a throwback to the Universum Regnum Era, meaning the whole kingdom. The term you may be more familiar with for this era is The Holy Roman Empire. The ruling class developed the concept of "translatio imperii", which means "Transfer of Rule" in Latin. The system was created to consolidate power among a few small linages of royal families. To do this, they formed a board of electors made of the regional leaders of the land. Ever wonder why Hilary Clinton became an electorate after her political career failed? Now you know.

The reason the electoral college is still around is because of metaphyseal phobia, the fear of change. The sheer complexity of the system and the imbalance of power given heavily to the elite white landowners, and where electorates are picked by current party members (not elected) is why things haven't changed. White land-owning men make up 65% of the representatives in our government system. It's in their interest to keep the system that maintains white-male-supremacy.

100 years ago in 1920, there were approximately 106.5 million people in the US being represented by about 26 million voters. That's roughly 1/5 of the population that was able to vote, representing the interests of the entire country. This is what conservatives are fighting to conserve.

Today, we have a population of around 330 million with about 160 million voters. We're fast approaching 1/2 the population that is now able to vote. That's a much better figure, but as the hashtag #abolishdemocracy trends on Twitter, it also means they are trying to find more ways to disenfranchise voters. Conservatives also don't indiscriminately disenfranchise.

With all the tactics previously mentioned having been deployed, it's unknown how effective they were at preventing or intimidating some from voting. We can assume that they were successful to a certain extent, but to what extent, we don't know. Any level of disenfranchisement is unacceptable.

In 1824 there were 4 Democratic contenders for the presidency, Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, William Crawford, and Henry Clay. While Andrew Jackson won both the popular vote and the highest Electoral votes, the rules state that the winner must have more than half the electoral votes, or it falls to a contingency according to the 12th Amendment. Because Jackson was 32 votes shy of reaching half the votes, the 12th Amendment was invoked. Clay, no longer a contender as they were only allowed to vote on the top three candidates, used his clout to sway the house into electing Adams, who then appointed Clay as Secretary of State. It's no surprise that Jackson accused them of stealing the election. It's time we also talk about amending the 12th Amendment to default the winner of the election to align with the winner of the highest popular vote.

In 1876, Rutherford B Hayes, an Ohio Republican, told the world that his opponent, a Democrat from New York Samuel Tilden, was single because he had syphilis. Tilden received 184 electoral votes compared to Hayes' who only received 165 votes, but because of the Civil War and the reconstruction of the south, in exchange for Democrats giving up the presidency, they agreed to remove federal troops from the south, leaving Democrats to reclaim control of the region and local governments. They then re-enacted the Black Code of laws that were banned during federal occupation allowing them to subjugate the black citizens as slaves in all but name for the next 87 years, and this went on to be known as the great compromise and is evidence that Democrats and Republicans are two wings of the same lying-ass bird.

In 1888 Republican Benjamin Harrison was the third president to win, while losing the popular vote. Both Harrison and the incumbent Democrat President Grover Cleveland accused the other of buying votes from citizens they called "floaters" with no party loyalty. In free-market capitalism, if you're an independent, or floater, shouldn't you have the right to sell your vote to the highest bidder? Blind loyalty is for the sheep, am I right?

In the year 2000, we kicked off the new millennia with the age-old tradition of voter suppression by electorates again, allowing Republican George W. Bush to win with a popular vote loss of over half a million people. 

While that amount of voter suppression might seem a little extreme, the US says, go big or go home, and in that fashion the 45th president, Donald J. Trump surpassed that margin by a far and won despite a more than 2.8 million popular vote loss. By far, the highest percentage of popular vote loss in history. It's no surprise to me that he turned out to be the biggest global embarrassment to any modern nation and American history––highlighting all America's flaws and failures, and none of our strengths or achievements. We're still wondering if he'll be the first president to be forcibly removed.

Are we going to wait around for this to happen again in another four years?

When we boil it down the bones of the argument, it's the difference between civil rights, the rights of an individual to be treated with equal consideration and fairness under the law, vs states rights, the right for each state to govern their citizens as they see fit, irrespective of the constitutionality or violation of human rights.

The congressional and electoral systems claim to be representative of the people and in our best interest. But if we crunch the numbers, this is clearly wrong.

SNROCINUTAF | FATUNICORNS

Let's talk about the electoral college and why it's not working.

#AbolishTheElectoralCollege

Resources:

• https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript#:~:text=We%20hold%20these%20truths%20to,their%20just%20powers%20from%20the
• https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/h/Holy_Roman_Empire.htm
• http://historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistoriesResponsive.asp?historyid=aa35
• https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43824.pdf
• https://www.270towin.com/2016_Election/
• https://guides.loc.gov/chronicling-america-1888-presidential-election
• https://www.history.com/news/presidents-electoral-college-popular-vote
• https://time.com/5579161/presidents-elected-electoral-college/
• https://www.vox.com/2020/11/4/21530891/colorado-proposition-113-national-popular-vote-compact-results
• https://www.census.gov/