Might makes right, right?

The other day as I was going going about doing my thing, I had the opportunity to witness an opposing viewpoint.  No one was duking it out - people were just calmly speaking their mind.  Specifically, they were talking about how twisted the Electoral College was and that it should be abolished.

The problem is, I don't think they understood what it was they were seeking.  Most people seem to think that the Electoral College is an actual place - where people go to college and vote on who gets to be President of the United States ("POTUS").  Sad, that.

There are primarily two schools of thought on how to elect a POTUS.  The Electoral College method (promulgated by our founding fathers) and the Popular Vote method (promulgated by every person/political faction who lost a POTUS election).  Let's take a look at both.

The Electoral College is a body of electors established by the United States Constitution (i.e. it's not a place in the physical sense). Pursuant to Article II, Section 1, Clause 2, the legislature of each state determines the manner by which its electors are chosen. Each state's number of electors is equal to the combined total of the state's membership in the Senate and House of Representatives.  Presently, there are are 100 senators and 435 representatives, respectively.

Basically, as I understand it, the Electoral College works to make things fair across the country allotting a proportional share of representatives for each state.  A majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect the President.  A state’s entitled allotment of electors equals the number of members in its Congressional delegation: one for each member in the House of Representatives plus two for your Senators.  So, there are 538 Electoral representatives in all (435 + 100 = 538).

So, California has 53 representatives in the House and two in the Senate.  That gives California 55 Electoral representatives.  Wyoming, on the other hand, has 1 representative in the House and 2 in the senate giving Wyoming 3 Electoral representatives.  Three is not a very powerful number in the grand scheme of things, but when you add up all the small numbers, you can get some mighty powerful numbers when it counts.

For example, in the 2016 election, seventeen states that the Republican candidate carried had less than 10 Electoral College representatives,  Heck, the largest state that the Republican candidate won had only 38 representatives (compared with California's whopping 55).  

In fact, the smallest states held 97 Electoral College votes.  That's 18% of the total, people.  While everyone was eyeing Florida (29), Pennsylvania (20), Texas (38), and California (55), no one paid attention to the small states (to their detriment).  Yep, it's the little guys that'll get you in the end.


The Popular Vote method is a bit more straight forward.  Basically, whomever gets more votes wins.  Simple enough.  Might makes right, right?

But, let's put this in perspective.  Say the USA were divided between California and Delaware.  California, with a population of 39.56 million would ALWAYS beat out Delaware with its population of 967,171.  So, why would anyone in humble Delaware ever go out to vote if they knew they would always lose to mighty California?

Thing is, it is possible to win a popular vote by getting more people to vote for you in any particular state but you could lose if you didn't also carry the Electoral College representative vote.

Which, of course, brings us to the "surprising" results of the 2016 election (where the Republican candidate STOMPED all over the democrat candidate and the democrat party has yet to realize it lost the race).

The thing is, in the 2016 election, the democrat candidate won the popular vote by about 2.1%.  The Republican candidate won the Electoral College vote by a whopping 304 to 227.

Hence the loooooooong running debate by the unsuccessful candidate's party on whether to abolish the Electoral College in favor of the the Popular Vote method.  

And herein lies the problem.

See, the Electoral College is a creature created by the United States Constitution.  In order to get rid of it, there must be a two-thirds majority vote in both the House of Representatives AND the Senate or by a constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of the State legislatures.

Yeah, that's not gonna happen any time soon.  I mean just imagine getting two-thirds of the 50 state legislatures to agree on anything.  Dang but they can't even balance their respective budgets.  How in blazes are they going to agree on what method is best?

And, so the beat-down goes on.  To win, or not to win - THAT is the question.  More specifically, what are we the people willing to do to win our particular perspectives.  Keep a Constitution that has endured over 200 years of struggle and strife and is still a beacon to the world or start over, mid-stream, simply because our candidate didn't win.

Yeah, that's a tuffy.