Presidential Elections
This seems rather appropriate to discuss at this point in time because I can not seem to escape it. It is all over the TV, radio, internet, newspapers, etc. Let me start by saying that I am not talking in favor of, or against, any particular candidate or party. In general I will be bashing the entire process for it’s time consuming wastefulness and relatively damaging impact on our society. I am a very patriotic American and do feel that democracy, in general, is usually better than any other choice of obtrusive government. I think it is a great honor and privilege to be able to have our individual voices heard and to have a say so in whom the leader of our great country will be. The question here is of course, do we as citizens actually elect the President?
During the formation of our government, it was decided that the average citizen was just too damn stupid (read ignorant) to be responsible for electing the leader of the free world. Based on this revelation, an institution called the United States Electoral College was put in place. Essentially this group of 538 ‘representatives’ meet every 4 years to officially elect the President of the United States. Now each representative is suppose to cast their vote in a manner that reflects the overall majority of their district/constituent base. Theoretically, this should be a very effective way of electing the President; that is of course if you trust your representative to vote the way he or she should based on the majority vote of their constituents. Now in most of the elections throughout our history, the popular vote has matched the Electoral College vote. Three times it has not.
• 1824 - Adams vs Jackson
• 1876 - Hayes vs Tilden
• 1888 - Harrison vs Cleveland
In these elections, the candidate who won the popular vote (the citizen vote) did not win the Electoral College vote (the representative vote) and therefore was not elected President. Are these three isolated events enough to cast aside the entire process? Of course not, but it does show three times in history where the citizen’s voices were ignored. I believe that this style of leader electing is dated and does not really apply any longer. The average intelligence level of all citizens is staggeringly higher today than it was over two hundred years ago.
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