From Hanging Chads to Dead Ones: Wasted Votes and Shoddy Results of the Electoral College Process

So we’re definitely getting another conservative in the Supreme Court, inches before Trump’s first term is up. This is all expected but nonetheless ridiculous. We really have to drop the faux shock and outrage, because this was seen from a mile away. Backing completely from their claims in 2016, the Republican Party are taking advantage of a wild opportunity to have not one, but THREE justices confirmed in the span of four years. This is a golden chance for one party to pretty much guarantee that their political stances remain protected in the highest of courts. Instead of sticking to their word after their controversial 2016 actions, they have once again bullied and lied and swindled their way to getting what they want---as it has been throughout this shoddy administration.

While Joe Biden (rightfully so) remains mostly mum on the subject, the Progressives and even some of the quieter Democrats are vowing revenge and renegade changes once they take (potentially, barring the right results) the Senate and the Presidency. There’s talks of expanding the Supreme Court number of justices by a huge amount, there’s talks of getting rid of the filibuster, making U.S. territories and even Washington D.C. official states (Puerto Rico deserves to vote for their future, by the way), and changing a variety of other procedures to ensure that this stretch of rewarded insubordination doesn’t happen ever again. If the Democrats can indeed wipe out Trump and his crew in November, then 2021 is going to be chock full of changes---some by Biden and some by the Progressives still furious at Bernie’s loss in the primaries.

Yes, the Democrats have every single reason to become furious at what has happened. To add to that, the Democrats have every reason to be furious as to what has happened to the United States. We’re STILL in a pandemic with lots of death and tragedy as well as a major economic and housing crash looming once the new year rolls around and Capitalist America is going to increase in major anxiety. This will be the potentially THIRD Democrat since 1992 to have to clean up a Republican mess (Clinton after Bush Sr., Obama after Bush Jr., Biden after Trump).

But they don’t have to figure out dozens of changes to make to ensure that the Republicans stop becoming the “No-Party” mantra they adapted first back in 2008 when Barack Obama won. They don’t have to implement dozens of fixes to the White House and the policies. Solution is actually a lot simpler. One major change is all that’s needed to help the future of what has become an extremely fractured country:

Killing the Electoral College, once and for all.

The Electoral College is the reason why the last two Republican presidents even made it to office. Both Donald Trump and George W. Bush lost the popular vote, the American voters didn’t even actually select them. It had been 112 years between presidents that won the election despite losing the popular vote, and now it happened twice in the last five instances. There’s a chance it might even happen a third time as Donald Trump is just gunning for the Midwestern White Americans as well as the South to carry him while the rest of the nation is shifting towards Biden.

Side-Note: If come 2021 we have 50% of the election victors in the current century being determined by electoral college despite popular votes going to the other candidate, expect a riot in Washington D.C. that will last years.  

It’s ridiculous with all the advanced technology, all the better examples of electoral methods around the world, and with even the reasoning behind the electoral college being as outdated as Trump’s beliefs, that we’re still deciding on who is going to run a nation of 300 million plus using a winner-take-all system that pretty much evens the playing field of every state, regardless of population, economic standpoint, and overall impact on the country. Yea there’s electoral votes, but it means nothing to the minority voters in each state if each section is just a giant winner-take-all and their votes wouldn’t really count outside their borders.

As a reminder, ANYTHING that was invented to appeal to slaveowners should be eradicated.

Let’s take the Republicans in California for example. 4 million people in the state voted for Donald Trump in 2016, but it means nothing because Cali is a very Democrat-centric state, and their four million only means 31% of the entire state vote, and doesn’t mean jack squat otherwise except contributing to a pointless popular vote total in the end. On the other hand, Montana gave all their electoral points to Trump despite them having only 280,000 voting for him. So tell me, who is being represented better? The Republicans in California, several-million citizens of a state that registers as a top-10 global economy? Or Montana, a state that is 35% protected land and the overall population doesn’t even dance past a million? Believe it or not, the Electoral College affects Republicans just as much as the Democrats, despite what the opposition in the White House will tell you.  

Democrats’ turn. Let’s look at Texas: 10 elections in a row has gone to the Republican Party despite there being more Democrats here than the overall population of over 20 other states. So whether its 1, 2, or 3 million Dems, their state’s notoriously Republican ways prevents their votes from counting at all, all the EC votes goes to the Republican candidate. How is this fair? How can you be convinced to vote as Democrat in Houston when it will barely hold any value whatsoever? How can you ever feel represented when your state is labeled a specific color and becomes branded for an entire term by one major specific preference?

Look at Trump’s response to the Pacific Coast wildfires, if Cali and Oregon had voted Red, there would have been federal help on Day 1. This labeling of states as Blue or Red allows politicians to pick and choose who to help and who to criticize. The Electoral College enhances this us vs. them mentality. And even though Blue California and Blue Oregon is burning, most of the wildfires are coming from North California, which is predominantly Republican.

Then…the third parties. They are the most shafted, because not only do they not appear in all ballots across the country, but under the current methodology, there is ZERO chance a third party can even carry a state, let alone win an election. Our strongest potential third-party candidate since Abraham Lincoln, Mr. Bernie Sanders, has to rely on running as a Democrat despite his platform being much more leftist because trying to compete as a third option has too many obstacles. In 2016 AND 2020, he was at multiple points the most popular candidate in the entire country and the one with the strongest financial support. Yet he didn’t even escape the Primaries.

Enough. Kill the Electoral College. One person equals one vote.

Land doesn’t vote.

States don’t vote.

Trees and rocks don’t vote.

Mountains don’t vote.

Fields don’t vote.

It should be simply one person, one vote, and the winning candidate is determined by who the Americans prefer and nothing else. Most votes wins. Higher score wins. Imagine the Cubs losing to the Cardinals even though they had more runs because the Cardinals scored in more innings.

Ending the Electoral College not only harms the two-party structure that’s choking American politics, but also prevents incidents of the candidate the Americans chose still falling short.

Al Gore won by a close but-still countable 500,000 votes (could be more, but that fun recount in Florida was cut short by the Courts), and no hanging chads should have prevented his victory even if Florida supposedly voted more for Bush. Then there’s Hillary Clinton, who won by a whopping 3 million votes. If you want more pure certainty, we can do ranked voting, in which you rank all the candidates and we can figure out a majority vote in that method. But in a country of 300 million, the current system is flawed and not representative of what the country wants, its not a good representation of what the Americans within said borders wants to see in the future. Voter turnout is already low enough because of these same frustrations and shenanigans, with only 56% of registered Americans placing a pick in 2016.

Donald Trump won despite getting a measly 46% chunk of the 56% that showed up to vote. How can that man be representing hundreds of millions of Americans with only 24% of their vote? How can you honestly proclaim George W. Bush the president with about a quarter of voting approval?

Side-Note: And in case you believe this is strictly an anti-Republican stance, Obama in 2008 got about 31% of voting support from all Americans. That’s a much better number, but you know that number should be higher.

But between voter oppression, political fatigue and frustration, and an electing system that all but convinces people that their votes don’t really matter, it makes sense why voters in this generation and this century are fed up with the entire system.

So back to the madness of the Supreme Court Justices and why the Electoral College is related to this.

All this chaos of the Trump Administration and their upcoming third nomination to Supreme Court Justice honestly happened because the Republicans have stuck to a specific core of people and never wavered from them. Their goal is to win through the slimmest margins, through techniques that doesn’t draw in more voters, but actually shuts out more voters. Republicans are almost always behind the controversies of post Jim Crow laws, gerrymandering, voter oppression, added stupid requirements to vote, and a constant inability to spend more to ensure better elections. This is why they win elections, despite the strong disapproval from the rest of the country. All their presidential victories in the last 35 years has been by the tightest of margins in the popular vote.

Republicans average margin of popular vote victory in successful elections since 1988: 2%

Democrats average margin of popular vote victory in successful elections since 1988: 6.3%

Side-Note: A lot of this info paints a good picture for Joe Biden winning, considering he has stronger support than Hillary in 2016 and has the arsenal of proof of Trump’s awfulness to back him up.

George W. Bush once had a 71% disapproval rating, with his father scoring 60%. Democrats know how to run the country, Republicans know how to run elections. This century so far has seen only ONE Republican candidate win the popular vote (Bush Jr. in 2004), yet Republicans have been in presidential control for 12 of the 20 years, giving us multiple wars, multiple economic crashes, and an ongoing pandemic that has killed 200,000 plus. Thanks, Electoral College.

Imagine a world in which Al Gore won because of having more votes. We would have avoided the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts entirely (even though 9/11 remains up in the air, with me believing that it would have happened anyway). We would have probably even been able to better-detect the Wall Street chaos that led to the housing crisis. Also under Al Gore in 2000 we could have even started our fight against climate change. THIS is what the voters wanted, not a Bush Jr. win that led to multiple wars spanning decades and multiple economic disasters.

Imagine if in 2016 Hillary Clinton had won because of her 3 million vote victory margin. We would have avoided the rise in hate crimes, the war threats against China, North Korea and Iran, the Twitter and bicker battles against dozens of countries, the massive dip in global standing, the rise of ICE and their horrendous behavior, the escalating tensions coming with the rise of this public racism coming from the cult, Charlottesville, the horrible reaction to Puerto Rico after the 2017 hurricanes, and of course the multitude of Supreme Court Justices being put in. We’ve had FIVE Justices put in by Republican presidents, and both of them lost the popular vote! Thanks, Electoral College.

The Democrats don’t need to stuff the Supreme Court (they should, though), they don’t have to court Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands to get even. They don’t have to speak with this fire and rage and warnings of a 2021 reckoning. All they have to do is hurt Republicans on the most flawed position in politics: the Electoral College.

Kill the College, and this will force the Republicans to play nice(r) and fight harder to come up with better candidates to represent them and the Conservatives nationwide. Kill the College, and this will actually give voters nationwide an actual voice, as their votes will count towards a total that actually has a value. Kill the College, and we can destroy the sporting event mannerisms related to American politics today. Kill the College, and I can guarantee you that voter turnout will increase exponentially—especially if we can combine that with Election Day being a federal holiday. Kill the College, and this will force people running for any political position to try to court members of their party AND those on opposing sides. Since every vote counts, it won’t be just the big states and swing states getting all the attention during the campaigning.

Whether you are a Liberal in Alaska, a Conservative in Oregon, a Progressive in Arkansas, or a Green Party supporter in Oklahoma, your vote will count and can have purpose in this election and beyond. Killing the Electoral College benefits third-party and independent candidates the most, but it benefits essentially every person in America, except for the politicians that thrive on the current broken system.

In 2021, this should be the Democrats’ first major move to make after the coronavirus is about eliminated and Trump and his corrupt friends are arrested. This will guarantee better elections overall and will prevent terrible scrubs mostly rejected by Americans like Trump and Bush Jr. to end up in office and screw things up royally. Then and only then can there be a better picture as to where the country should go, with actually-selected candidates in power and in control. But as long as the Electoral College remains, the threat of the wrong person ending up with the most important job in the country will continue. And this country cannot survive another shitty Republican.

Kill the Electoral College. That’s all the revenge the Democrats actually need.

P.S. But yea, expanding the Supreme Court Judges count to 15, eliminating the filibuster, making Washington D.C. a state, passing a stronger Voting Rights Act, destroying gerrymandering, and giving voting rights to all U.S. territories would also be good too.