West River Eagle

This is how I picture it

When “We the people” does not mean “We the People”


We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.


The first six words of the above preamble layout the framework of what many historians call one of the most important documents ever written, the U.S. Constitution.


The force behind the 240-year project called American Democracy is that the people of the United States have a say in how the government of the United States operates, by electing officials to represent them; a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.


One essential area amongst the framework of the constitution that takes power away from the people however is the election of the President of the United States. The Electoral College selects the president rather than by a direct vote of the people.


No, the Electoral College is not an actual physical institute of learning but rather an institution that is called upon once every four years only for the sake of the election of our president. With this system, the choice for president is made by 538 citizen electors rather than by the 325 million residents of the country.


What happens if the popular vote and electoral vote differ?


Such is the case in last week’s presidential election, where Hillary Clinton won the popular vote over Donald Trump, however he presumptively won the Electoral College vote. (The Electoral College does not officially cast their vote until mid-December.) This has happened four other times in U.S. history, most recently in the 2000 election when George W. Bush defeated Al Gore. Before that, three times in the 19th century in 1824, 1876, and 1888.


One would think that in a democracy, the popular vote would be the means by which the nation’s leader is chosen. This is the case for every other elected leader that we choose, from mayors and council representatives at the local level to the governor of our state.


So why do we use the Electoral College system?


The Electoral College was developed as a compromise between the framers of the constitution. One segment wanted a direct popular vote of the people, while another segment wanted the president to be selected by the congress.


Those opposed to congress selecting the president, argued that the president would then be dependent and beholden to the congress that selected him or her and therefore a true Separation of Powers would not exist in the federal government.


Alexander Hamilton who was opposed to the popular vote, argued that the “immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station. We cannot trust the decision to the people themselves. Rather, a “small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.”


Elbrige Gerry, a signer of the Declaration of Independence also opposed the idea of direct elections. Interestingly, he believed the people could be easily misled by a few designing men or manipulated by certain groups.


Thus the compromise gave birth to the Electoral College.


The ideal behind the Electoral College was that the electors as Hamilton stated would “possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.” At the time, it was believed that electors would be an independent entity, free of party control and would vote their conscience.


The framers left the process of the selection of state electors to be determined by each state; with each state having the same number of electors as the number of representatives in congress.


In South Dakota, we have three electoral votes. Those three votes are awarded to the presidential candidate in a winner take all fashion, with the highest number of votes for the three electors eventually going to their candidate. On Election Day when voters go to the polls, we don’t actually ever vote for the president, but rather those electors who have pledged to vote for a certain candidate.


Although pledged to one candidate, an elector can vote for whichever candidate they chose, however that has occurred only a handful of times in election history.


In states such as South Dakota, who predominately vote republican, voters from the minority party essentially will never have a vote for president. The vote’s casts for the electors in the minority party are basically worthless, as those electors will never have an opportunity to cast their own vote for president.


Only four times in the 31 Presidential elections that have occurred in the 127-year history of South Dakota have the electoral votes gone to a candidate other than the Republican candidate.


As a registered independent voter, I vote for the candidate not the party that he or she belongs to. I have no problem with majority rule, but unless I vote for the candidate from the majority party, my vote for the president will never count.


That’s a frustrating concept to accept, but it is the reality for the 142,346 South Dakotan’s and the other 70,315,001 Americans who didn’t vote for Trump.


When two of the five flip-flopped elections happen within a 16-year period after not taking place for 112 years, and with our nation being deeply divided, the chance of the same situation repeating itself in the future presidential election cycles is a strong possibility. That possibility should give lawmakers some pause to think an amendment to the process should happen. Sadly however, this is most likely the election method that we as a nation will have to utilize. 


Changing the election process would require an amendment to the constitution, which would require approval of two-thirds of the house and senate along with three-fourths of the 50 states in the union. With the deep partisan divide we’ve seen in Washington D.C. and throughout the country in recent years, good luck with that.


With the house, senate, and a majority of governorships being held by republicans, the states with republican strongholds will not want to change the process anytime soon.


Although there have been amendments introduced to the constitution attempting to eliminate the Electoral College, all have lacked support and have failed. Following each election presidential cycle, supporters of the losing candidate have been critical of the Electoral College.


Ironically, one such individual, who in November 2012 following the re-election of President Obama, tweeted on Twitter, “The electoral college is a disaster for democracy.” That individual was president-elect Donald Trump.



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