Carnie letter: Electoral College

With reference to your companion pieces on the Electoral College (Dec. 5), Walt Thode asks “What Good is the Electoral College?” Rep. Raul Labrador describes its place at the time of the Constitutional Convention of 1787. But this is not 1787. However intended 229 years ago, this is 2016, with its absence of the causative slavery issue, much less today’s vast media coverage and social networking. The American public is, or can be, well-informed individually, despite being nurtured on the fiction of “one man — one vote.”

The answer to Thode’s “What Good is the the Electoral College?” is simple: It facilitates the “election/re-election” of the professional and would-be politicians intent upon seeking or retaining their places in office, never mind “one man — one vote.”

There are many places where our electoral system might be improved: limitation on time for campaigning (preventing numbing of the public mind) and simultaneous primary elections (preventing early states from determining which candidates could subsequently be considered elsewhere). But foremost is the scrapping of the Electoral College. Today we need to remove the Electoral College subterfuge surrounding “one man — one vote” so that our individual votes become meaningful.

This story was originally published December 28, 2016 at 10:25 AM with the headline "Carnie letter: Electoral College."