Every few years there comes a time when many in the United States once again question this country’s antiquated and arcane voting system. Oddly enough, this time of questioning usually coincides with a federal election that is often dubbed, “the most important election of our time.” It is sad that in a country self-described as the greatest democracy in the world that so often, and more and more in recent years, abundant questions abound as to the efficacy, legitmacy, and fairness of our U.S. electoral system, particuarly in the case of Presidential Elections.

The Monkey and I are trying to avert our eyes to the various reports popping up in recent days regarding voter suppression and other woes that clearly stained the 2000 election, and possibly threw the 2004 election in the State of Ohio. On the surface, this looking the other way may seem like denial, but in actuality we are instead attempting to not invoke the “Law of Attraction,” and give even more energy to the idea that the fix is already in on this election, in order to prevent this notion from snowballing into fruition on an energetic level (remember, the Law of Attraction works “both” ways). But it’s getting tougher to ignore, or more accurately, to divert our attention from. Just this morning in fact, CNN.com ran with a headline story on their homepage about 50,000 voters being purged from the rolls in the State of Georgia, a state where polls are indicating a historic upset could very well be in the works.

The silver lining to many of these disturning concerns that Democrats and Progressives share about voter suppression and that Republicans and Conservatives share about “voter fraud” (which is mostly a sham, anyway) is that many of these issues could most likely be remedied with a few fundamental changes to how we run elections in this country.

While simple in theory, these changes will take a lot of energy from citizens and our legislators to put into place. Most importantly, these changes will require a massive shift in consciousness towards simplicity, transparency, and practicality.

A Little History

Most US citizens are aware of the fact that our Presidential election is not a direct election or a popular vote (which often makes me and Monkey wonder why we even collect national polling data, as such information is useless in a practical sense, although it does satisfy curiousity and give cable news networks something to blabber about). Instead, we use a system based on an “Electoral College,” and it goes something like this:

• The Presidential Election is not a national election at all, but a collection of 51 simultaneous state elections (including Washington, DC).
• Citizens in actuality don’t vote for any candidate in at all, but instead cast ballots for “Electors” who in turn cast ballots for the candidate for whom they are pledged to vote. The Constitution allows state legislatrues to each choose their own method for selecting Electors. Oddly enough, they don’t have to vote for the person you voted for, but in practice end up voting for the candidate who receives the most popular votes in their state, except in the case of Maine and Nebraska, in which different Electors are chosen for each Congressional District. Hence, these are the only two states that could possibly “split” their slate of Electors.
• The number of Electors in each state are calculated by taking the number of US Senators in that state (always 2) plus the number of US Representatives. DC gets an equal number of Electors as the least populous state, which currently provides three Electors. (As a side note, Washington DC currently enjoys the highest per capita number of Electors with regards to its total population, essentially lending it disproportionate weight when it comes to throwing Electoral votes towards a candidate).
• Based on a Federalist system, the US Electoral College is really a manifestation of the idea that state governments are mostly independent and that the Federal Government is an institution created to govern the “Federation” of States, not the people. In this way citizens have the power to elect local and state governments as well as the US Congress, who in turn are responsible for electing and holding accountable the Federal Government.

Away from Our Federalist Ways

It is important to understand the current system is rooted in Federalism, which is a concept I would argue that many Americans are not completely familiar with, especially given the huge emphasis that the Mainstream Media places on national and Presidential Politics today. In order to change the Electoral College, there must be a fundamental paradigm shift in the way we view the office of the Presidency. It would require us to remove the lens of Federalism when gazing at the conundrum of fairly electing our Executive leader, a change that in many ways would veer away from the origins of over 200 years of governance. In many respects, this change in perception of the Office has already occurred. Now all that is required is for the laws of the land to catch up with the shift in perceptions and a altering of expectations about how we select our Executive leaders.

The Founding Fathers had amazing foresight and wisdom to be able to shape our government in the way they did in a time period in which this nation was unbelievably different than the country in which we are currently living. Despite academic test scores and recent surveys that indicate a staggering lack of civic knowledge on behalf of our citizens and particularly our young people, voters today are still lightyears more sophisticated than the average citizenry of the late 1700’s, with access to volumous and unlimited information and resources to fuel their opinions on the foreign and domestic policy matters at stake during Presidential elections. While the Founding Fathers displayed a vibrant commitment to creating a government and a society that was unique in its capacity to provide and protect unprecedented expressions of freedoms and safeguards to Democracy, capitalism, and the ideals of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” they didn’t entirely trust the average rather uninformed voter and wished to keep the reigns of power within the hands of the informed, privileged, and landed gentry embodied by the original delegates to the Constitutional Convention.

In other words, in the area of electing Presidents, they were either shortsighted, or were incapable of predicting the impact that the Executive Office would have on the citizens, both symbolically and practically speaking. Quite simply stated, the times have changed. Today, in 2008, citizens see the person who occupies the office of the Presidency as the leader of this nation of people and even more, as the leader of the free world. That changed perception of the office requires a change to the method by which we select the President. In practice, the President no longer presides over a federation of states, but instead over a nation of people. Hence, the President should be primarily accountable to, and elected by, a nation of people, not an arcane and often hidden body of Electors.

A Solution is Right in Front of Us

Thanks to Founding Fathers, the power to make changes to our government lies in our hands. A huge majority of Americans would prefer a popular vote to decide the Presidency, and yet the Electoral College remains, along with a multitude of weaknesses in our system that are on full display in tightly contested elections like in 2000, 2004, and most likely, in 2008 as well.

In my next post, I will explain several methods to update the means by which we elect Presidents, as well as several reforms which would prevent the cloud of illegitimacy that has plagued the last few elections. Until then…

Thought for the Day 10/2/08: You Are What You Think

“We are what we think, we do what we think, we become what we think, and thus it must always be.” — U.S. Andersen, “Three Magic Words,” page 143.

Image courtesy: Sanja Gjenero