We the People, and the Electoral College

We the People, and the Electoral College

So, what you may or may not know about me, your humble writer, is that I work two jobs.  I work my main job (I’ve been employed there for 21 years), and about a year ago I had to get a second job waiting tables three or four times a week.  It BUH-LOWS!!!  First it was a PRIDE SUCKING VORTEX having to get a job waiting tables (I’ve clearly decided to “own it”).  The thing that sucks most about it is I have no one to blame for having to get a second job but myself.  I made a whole bunch of stupid financial mistakes (or would it be a “gaggle” of mistakes?  Most likely it would be a “murder” of mistakes) so I spend the time I used to enjoy with my family to try to keep them fed.  Seriously, it’s like they can eat three times a day and never get tired of it.

So last night I’m waiting tables.  I was waiting on a gaggle of teenagers who were, apparently, a debate team from a local high school.  As you can imagine, I can be quite charming, and being as how I have the gift of gab AND inherited the gene (from my children) I shall call “smartassery” I got along really well with the kids.

In the course of the evening, I was teasing some of them when a young man said to me, “The Electoral College is stupid.”  I have no idea why he said it.  I didn’t know if it was a subject he was debating or what.  The sad thing is I was super busy (which is almost the same as normal busy, I was just wearing a cape) so I wasn’t able to ask him his thoughts on the subject.  More sadly-er than that, I didn’t get a chance to spout out my thoughts on the subject either.  Man, if only I had a website where I could spew my dumbery to my tens of followers.  Oh wait! I have one!!

Just for a quick review, how it works is each state gets a certain number of Electoral College votes based on the number of Representatives they have.  So each state gets two (because each state has two Senators) and then how ever many members they have in the House of Representatives.  So if you live in a state with 5 members of congress you will have 7 Electoral College votes (2 plus 5).  Capisce?

Just for fun I Googled “how many Americans live within 50 miles of a coast” and came up with this website.  It states, “The narrow fringe comprising 17 percent of the contiguous U.S. land area is home to more than half of the nation’s population.”  MORE THAN HALF.

So ask yourself, if more then half of the population lives within fifty miles of the coast, and we lived in a democracy (popular vote) instead of a republic, how often do you think someone who lives in Iowa would ever see a Presidential hopeful?  I’ll answer it for you.  NEVER.  Why would a Presidential hopeful ever waste their time in one of the “fly-over states?”

So two things happened; first, our Founding Fathers were obsessed with the separation of power, AND in either a moment of inspiration or pure BRILLIANCE came up with the Electoral College.  They knew the country would grow: they wanted to insure the smaller states wouldn’t be run over by the ones that are more populous.

Did you ever see the movie “Hunger Games?”  You know how they had a bunch of Districts, and all of them were repressed except the Capital.  I’m not saying it would be like that, but it would kinda be like that.

We live in a Constitutional Republic, NOT a democracy.  In fact, the Founding Fathers hated democracy.  You will not even find the word in our Constitution or the Declaration of Independence.  To me, it seems there are two groups of people what want a true democracy; those who want collective rule, and those who don’t know what they are talking about.  In 1814 John Adams said, “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”

In Federalist papers #10 Madison said, “Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”

On the other hand, do you know who really liked the idea of democracy?  I’ll give you two quotes: Vladimir Lenin said: “Democracy is indispensable to Socialism;” and Karl Marx said: “Democracy is the road to Socialism.”

One of my favorite quotes about a democracy is by (as far as I can tell) the infamous “Unknown” author, who said, “Democracy is when two wolves and a sheep take a majority vote on what’s for supper.”  It is great…unless you’re a sheep.

On the flip side, “In a constitutional republic, the wolves are forbidden from voting on what’s for supper and the sheep is well armed.”  In other words, the rights of the sheep are protected from the wolves by the constitution, and if the wolves rise up against the rights of the sheep, the sheep has a means to protect itself from the mob.  That is why the sheep should always be well armed.

I’ll tell ya, our Founding Fathers were BRILLIANT.

LIFEZILLA:  It’s like the little engine that could