Let's get rid of the Electoral College

@Setanta,

Washington had an interesting personality. Once as a joke Hamilton talk a friend of his into the idea of slapping Washington on the back in a friendly manner at a social gathering. Washington was not at all happy or amuse

Sometimes being unadventurous when it come to changing the constitution and worrying about having a run away constitution convention is not completely unreasonable.

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@Robert Gentel,

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Their votes would have just as much weight as any other citizen and would certainly not be "meaningless". The notion that they need disproportionate influence to have a meaningful vote is silly.

Silly to you, but , thank Goodness, not the Founders.

Ours is a union of states, and a republic. It is not one monolithic pure democracy.

You assume that the Union can never be broken.

Why would anyone, or any body of people want to remain within a union when it is demonstrated over and over again that their concerns and wishes are meaningless?

You are advocating a status for states, like those I've cited, of satellite, not member.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

You assume that the Union can never be broken.

No, I don't. You assume I think it would be an inherently bad thing.

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Why would anyone, or any body of people want to remain within a union when it is demonstrated over and over again that their concerns and wishes are meaningless?

Their votes would be just as meaningful as any other citizen's. There is always going to be a minority and a losing side, and being part of the losing side doesn't diminish the meaning of your vote as much as your vote inherently having less power than another citizen does.

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@BillRM,

BillRM wrote:

It just is not going to happen so talking about it is a complete waste of time.

There are a lot of things that aren't going to happen that people talk about for various reasons, if you personally think this is a waste of time to talk about, then what are you doing here talking about it?

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@Robert Gentel,

Hey if you are OK with the Union, we lost millions of lives to preserve, is OK to break, so be it.

At least you're being honest.

Of course anyone who enters the discussion with the notion that the Union needs to be preserved should just ignore your comments.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

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You yourself credited the winner-take-all method of allocating the electoral votes with helping to prop up the two party system here.

Yes, and Joe contradicted me, and as i am unable to provide a source, i deferred to his statement.

Well I agree with your first assessment despite any historical items being in dispute.

I think that allocating all the votes to the winner has the effect of making it less likely to have small parties gain ground, and this is a point Joe himself makes about the system here:

joefromchicago wrote:

First of all, there are three main props to the two-party system in the US: single-member congressional constituencies elected on a plurality basis; the nationwide election for a single chief executive; and the electoral college. These together largely explain why the US has, with brief exceptions, always had two major national parties contending for power. Take away any of those props, and it is possible that the two-party system would be severely compromised.

He might not credit the winner-take-all aspect of the system but I do, by allocating the minority parties votes to the winning party you undermine the small party's ability to gain ground. Instead of a minority votes being represented in the state's electoral votes, they are discarded and all the state's votes go to the majority party in the state.

Whatever the historical quibble you had with Joe over this, I think it's something that has a limiting effect on alternative political parties.

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By "local" control, by which i mean municipal, county and state elections.

Not coincidentally those aren't areas where I'm keen to change the system. I've limited my wish for the popular vote to presidential elections.

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In many others of the industrialized democracies, seats in the national legislature, and in local legislatures, if they exist, are allocated on the basis of the percentage of the vote polled by each party. In the United States, of course, we vote for a named individual. In the other industrialized democracies, local taxes and the allocation of those taxes are subject to the control of regional or national government. In the United States, citizens vote on tax levies, school levies and ballot initiatives at all levels (except the national level, although the right to do so at the national level is available--i suspect that the petition process is too daunting for anyone to have tried)--municipal, county and state.

In state elections in most states (i think perhaps in all of them, but i don't wish to make a statement i cannot support), key executive offices which are appointive in other industrial democracies, and which are appointive in the American national government, are elective--Secretary of State, Treasurer, Comptroller or Auditor, Attorney General. Furthermore, the Federal government cannot exercise its powers within the boundaries of a state in matters solely occurring in that state, except in so far as individually guaranteed rights can be alleged to have been violated (fourth amendment, fourteenth amendment).

For all of these reasons, I think their disproportionate political power with their representatives in the national legislature is enough to protect them from the tyranny of the majority and why I see presidential politics even less about local issues than it would be if they did not already enjoy such sovereignty.

With the ability to determine taxation, and many local laws guaranteed to them I don't see a strong case for their local interests to be disproportionately represented in the presidential election.

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As time has gone by, the independence and sovereignty of the several states has been eroded, and they've often made a devil's bargain with the Feds in order to get federal funding. Nevertheless, i remain convinced that Americans control their own destinies through a democratic process which is not matched elsewhere in the world.

But all of this seems to be derived from political instruments other than the electoral college. They already have sovereignty protections on many levels and I don't see any of those examples illustrating ways the electoral college protects those local interests.

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Apart from the guarantee of a republican form of government in every state, the Constitution leaves the affairs of each state in its own hands, and the ninth and tenth amendments were ratified to make it clear that that is the case. In turn, states have tended to leave the affairs of counties and municipalities in the hands of those elected by the residents of those districts.

I'm a big fan of this. I like self-determination and the US is more like a collection of countries in ways than one single country. I would have it no other way. But I don't see this kind of protection of local concerns being valuable in presidential politics through a structure such as the electoral college.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

Hey if you are OK with the Union, we lost millions of lives to preserve, is OK to break, so be it.

I think there are significant advantages to preserving a union, but I don't think it's an inherently good thing on the balance.

I don't, for example, think it was worth those lives to preserve the union in the Civil War at all. The network effect of the union is not worth that many lives just to maintain the lines in the sand drawn the way they were.

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At least you're being honest.

You act like this is a great admission of guilt. Nobody thinks it's such a big deal when other countries break up, but get teary eyed over their own motherlands. Do you treat Chinese attempts at unification as axiomatically good as well? Probably not. This is something I find more emotional than logical, and I can envision scenarios where everyone would be better served without trying to stay united.

For example, if a non contiguous state (say Alaska or Hawaii) were 90% conservative, and the rest of the country 90% liberal I think they'd be better served with self-determination outside of the Union. I don't think it's the end of the world if the Union is not preserved, and while I don't advocate any change to the Union I don't see it as being an inherently bad thing.

Like if Texas could secede... ;-)

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Of course anyone who enters the discussion with the notion that the Union needs to be preserved should just ignore your comments.

Alternately, they can provide arguments for why the preservation of the Union is axiomatically good or try to substantiate the notion that with an equal vote to any other citizen some votes would be "meaningless".

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@Robert Gentel,

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I think there are significant advantages to preserving a union, but I don't think it's an inherently good thing on the balance.

This makes no sense, unless you are saying that the advantages don't outweigh the disadvantages (as you see them). In other words whether or not the Union remains intact is less imporatant than doing away with the Electoral College.

I think you are just defending a position beyond what you actually believe.

If you don't want to admit you were wrong, just don't reply.

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You act like this is a great admission of guilt. Nobody thinks it's such a big deal when other countries break up, but get teary eyed over their own motherlands. Do you treat Chinese attempts at unification as axiomatically good as well? Probably not. This is something I find more emotional than logical, and I can envision scenarios where everyone would be better served without trying to stay united.

No, I commented that you were, at least, being honest. If you perceived an admission of guilt somewhere within, you need to examine your own thinking.

The United States of America has been a union of states for over 200 years and is currently the most powerful nation on the planet.

Emotional attraction? Really?

Please share with us your feverish visions of a broken Union where everyone is better served.

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@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

I never equated an electoral system's stability with whether it's good or not.

Then can you elaborate on this:

joefromchicago wrote:

And, in terms of results, there's something to be said for two centrist parties rather than a multitude of more doctrinaire parties. The US has had pretty much the same political system in place since 1804, which is a fairly good record as far as democracies go.

What makes this a "good" record?

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Robert Gentel wrote:
Ok, but do you favor any system?

I like the idea of instant runoff voting, which can be implemented now without requiring a constitutional amendment. I also like multi-member legislative districts with cumulative voting, but that would require a constitutional amendment to implement at the congressional level.

Curious: Do you favor those to the current system?

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Robert Gentel wrote:
This is a false analogy. More political controversy doesn't mean that the system isn't working.

If a system that is supposed to produce certain results instead yields a lot of ambiguous results, that's a pretty good indication that it's not working.

Contested results don't mean ambiguous results. As fbaezer notes your example of this in López Obrador is of a man who seems likely to contest any unfavorable result.

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Robert Gentel wrote:
You'd been talking about the political controversy as what made that a "disaster" and I was saying that to me the fact that disproportionate representation overrode popular will was the negative and not the contesting of the results.

How is that not a comment on the system you propose?

I did not say anything about that, what I said was that clarifying that I don't see 2000 as a disaster for the reasons you do isn't an argument in support of the system I proposed at all and much less a circular one.

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How is that a significant difference? If I vote for Candidate A, and Candidate A wins the national election even though Candidate B wins my state, how am I disadvantaged?

You tout the decisiveness of the electoral college results yourself as a benefit, denying those votes representation in the system is to deny the votes the ability to provide such additional decisiveness to the election results. Here is what you said along those lines earlier:

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Another good thing about the EC is that it magnifies small popular vote majorities, which lends an added degree of legitimacy to the result.

So if my votes are not represented because I was in the political minority in my state it denies my vote the influence toward at the very least the degree of legitimacy you are speaking of here.

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Again, where is the disadvantage? If a California citizen voted for Bush in 2004, and Bush would have won the national election under either an electoral college format or a popular vote system, where's the disadvantage to that California voter?

Just as in the above scenario, if the degree of legitimacy is derived from the winning margins they have lost some political power. Furthermore, in other scenarios there are very obvious and clear disadvantages to the California voter under this system so this is a bit of a moot point (whether Californians are disadvantaged in the current system). In 2000, a Californian who voted with the majority in the state was disadvantaged by his vote being worth less than some smaller states, and was disadvantaged to the point of the winner of the popular election, which this voter would have voted for, losing the election.

That's a pretty big disadvantage. With the system, their popular choice and the country's popular choice lost. Without the system they would have won. And in every election, they have the disadvantage of having a vote worth less than some of other citizens.

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It's only in close elections that the results can get scrambled, but then it's in close elections that a system's flaws are most often exposed -- and that goes for popular vote systems as well as for the electoral college.

That's part of what I don't like about the electoral college. It only directly impacts the result in close elections so it's largely symbolic the rest of the time, making some more equal than others without changing the end result. When it does come into play it overturns the will of the people in favor of the will of the more equal people.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

This makes no sense, unless you are saying that the advantages don't outweigh the disadvantages (as you see them). In other words whether or not the Union remains intact is less imporatant than doing away with the Electoral College.

No, but I think it's less important than losing hundreds of thousands of lives, and I think it's less important than some kinds of self-determination.

I don't think the system is bad enough to merit doing away with the Union, but I also don't think that it would result in that at all. If the system produces a couple more repeats of the 2000 election (no matter which way it goes) I would then see it as worth breaking the union for. But as it stands it's rare enough of an occurrence to be largely an intellectual pursuit. In practice it's not making much of a difference either way.

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I think you are just defending a position beyond what you actually believe.

If you don't want to admit you were wrong, just don't reply.

I'm perfectly willing to admit I am wrong if I can be convinced of it. Joe's come the closest with his analysis of the impact on the election results and political atmosphere. You waxing patriotic, not so much.

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No, I commented that you were, at least, being honest. If you perceived an admission of guilt somewhere within, you need to examine your own thinking.

You remarking about the honesty implies that there's reason to hide the opinion.

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The United States of America has been a union of states for over 200 years and is currently the most powerful nation on the planet.

Emotional attraction? Really?

Of course, you wouldn't see America being the most powerful nation on the planet as an inherent benefit if you didn't have a personal and emotional attachment to America. For example, did you shed a tear over the breakup of the Soviet Union?

I personally do not see anything inherently good, or bad, about America being the most powerful nation on the planet. I think it's had good results, and I think there haven't been any examples in history of a better application of such power but that doesn't mean a union for the sake of a union is an inherently good thing.

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Please share with us your feverish visions of a broken Union where everyone is better served.

I already did. I don't think the Union was worth preserving at the cost of the lives lost in the Civil War. It's not "feverish" it's just different priorities. My priority isn't how powerful America is and yours seems to be.

If the Union had been broken then, I do think that neither side would be as powerful as America is today, but I don't see that as an inherently bad thing.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

You do know on the flip side is the fact that hundreds of thousands of lives were lost to try to end the union also<grin>

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But all of this seems to be derived from political instruments other than the electoral college. They already have sovereignty protections on many levels and I don't see any of those examples illustrating ways the electoral college protects those local interests.

I did not make a claim that the democratic power of the people was a direct or even an indirect result of the existence of the college. I did not make a claim that the college protects local interests. I simply observed, à propos of your remarks about the undemocratic aspects of the college, that i believe Americans enjoy far more democratic control of their lives than is the case in the other industrial democracies. That remark was not made in extenuation of an argument for the college, it was simply an observation on the relative degree of democratic control the people exercise in their lives.

The ninth and tenth amendments to the constitution make explicit the reality of power for the Federal government, the several states and the people.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

and

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

So, as has been pointed out by me, and now by others, we have a republic, which means a government of laws (i.e., a government not subject to autocracy or rule by fiat, but a government subject to the law, and the modification, elimination or promulgation of law being constituted in a specified manner), but does not necessarily call for, nor exclude democratic institutions. The college and the Senate serve the interests of the several states which have formed the union, or which have subsequently joined the union. Other institutions of government serve the democratic interests of the people; as well, there are rights enumerated in the constitution, or not prohibited by it to the people. That there might be some institutions the primary purpose of which is to serve the interests of the several states, rather than to serve or establish democratic institutions for the people does no violence to the concept of a republic. In fact, the only parts of the constitution which comment upon or interfere with the sovereignty of the several states are the guarantee of a republican form of government in all states, and the enumeration of rights retained by the people which the several states may not then abridge.

I understand that this is something about which we disagree--that does not authorize, however, stating or implying that i have made arguments which i have not made.

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Some observations on the Civil War.

The war was fought not simply to preserve the union in the sense of making eleven (or fifteen, depending upon one's propagandistic view) break-away states return to the union, it was also fought to prevent the further fragmentation which might have resulted (and some then and now allege inevitable fragmentation) had the war been "lost" or not fought at all. It was also fought over the issue of slavery, despite claims by southern sympathizers who attempt to claim otherwise in an effort to sanitize the image of the heroic "embattled farmers" of the South. It was also fought over some constitutional issues. Article Three, Section three, first paragraph, first sentence reads:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

At the point at which Florida state militia seized the United States Arsenal at Apalachicola, about January 6 or 7, 1861 (i'd have to dig around for an exact date--it was, however, even before Florida seceded on January 10), the State of Florida was levying war on the United States. At the point at which the United States Arsenal at St. Augustine was seized, the day following, someone was levying war on the United States. At the point at which a mob from Pensacola attempted to seize the United States Arsenal near that city, on January 10, 1861, the State of Florida had levied war on the United States. All of these events took place before a confederacy had been formed, but they were abetted by militia from Alabama, who arrived to help besiege Fort Pickens in the Pensacola harbor, to which Lt. Slemmer of the United States Army had withdrawn when the attempt had been made to seize the military stores at Forts McRae and Barrancas. Subsequent attempts made on the United States Arsenal in St. Louis, foiled by Franz Sigel and German volunteers from the Missouri State Guard (almost all the rest of whom followed Sterling Price into Confederate service), the successful seizure of the United States Arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, the seizure of the public property of the Second United States Cavalry at San Antonio, and eventually, the bombardment of Fort Sumter in the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina all constitute levying war on the United States.

Furthermore, Article One, Section Ten, first paragraph reads:

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

. . . and the third paragraph reads:

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

Therefore, not only did the actions of the state troops which had seized or attempted to seize Federal property constitute treason, but those acts, and the formation of the Confederate States of America in Montgomery, Alabama on February 8, 1861 were all violations of the two above quoted paragraphs.

So, adopting Winfield Scott's point of view, "Wayward Sisters, depart in peace," or to have lost the war, would have been just as likely to end the authority of the constitution as to risk the disintegration of the rump of the union. To believe that any portion of the union as previously constituted could have survived either the passive acceptance of the departure of eleven states, or the loss of the war, is, in my never humble opinion, naive.

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@Robert Gentel,

Robert Gentel wrote:

I don't think the Union was worth preserving at the cost of the lives lost in the Civil War. It's not "feverish" it's just different priorities. My priority isn't how powerful America is and yours seems to be.

If the Union had been broken then, I do think that neither side would be as powerful as America is today, but I don't see that as an inherently bad thing.

That's unique. Have you expanded on this thought somewhere?

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@Robert Gentel,

Robert Gentel wrote:

joefromchicago wrote:
I never equated an electoral system's stability with whether it's good or not.

Then can you elaborate on this:

joefromchicago wrote:
And, in terms of results, there's something to be said for two centrist parties rather than a multitude of more doctrinaire parties. The US has had pretty much the same political system in place since 1804, which is a fairly good record as far as democracies go.

What makes this a "good" record?

It's "good" in the sense that it's a better record of stability than most other systems. It's the record that's good, not necessarily the system.

Robert Gentel wrote:

Curious: Do you favor those to the current system?

Multi-member districts with cumulative voting isn't the kind of system that could replace the electoral college -- they address different types of electoral contests. Instant runoff voting can be adopted without doing away with the electoral college, so they're not incompatible.

In general, I am largely agnostic about the electoral college. Where I diverge from people who advocate popular voting systems is at the point where they contend that there are no disadvantages to adopting a popular vote system in place of the present system.

Robert Gentel wrote:

Contested results don't mean ambiguous results. As fbaezer notes your example of this in López Obrador is of a man who seems likely to contest any unfavorable result.

Well, it all depends on your perspective, doesn't it. If it's your candidate who ends up with the short stick, then the results are disputed. On the other hand, if your candidate comes out the winner, then the other side is just a bunch of whiners. I'm sure there are people who think Lopez Obrador is a big crybaby but who also think Al Gore got screwed by the supreme court in 2000. If there is a significant portion of the population that believes an electoral result is illegitimate, then that's a real problem, and it doesn't matter if the people who believe that are all a bunch of crybabies or if they have a genuine point.

Robert Gentel wrote:

You tout the decisiveness of the electoral college results yourself as a benefit, denying those votes representation in the system is to deny the votes the ability to provide such additional decisiveness to the election results.

Hunh?

Robert Gentel wrote:

Here is what you said along those lines earlier:

Quote:
Another good thing about the EC is that it magnifies small popular vote majorities, which lends an added degree of legitimacy to the result.

So if my votes are not represented because I was in the political minority in my state it denies my vote the influence toward at the very least the degree of legitimacy you are speaking of here.

You're going to have to do a much better job of explaining that. I can't make any sense of what you're trying to say here.

Robert Gentel wrote:

Just as in the above scenario, if the degree of legitimacy is derived from the winning margins they have lost some political power.

Trying ... trying ... nope, still not following you.

Robert Gentel wrote:

Furthermore, in other scenarios there are very obvious and clear disadvantages to the California voter under this system so this is a bit of a moot point (whether Californians are disadvantaged in the current system). In 2000, a Californian who voted with the majority in the state was disadvantaged by his vote being worth less than some smaller states, and was disadvantaged to the point of the winner of the popular election, which this voter would have voted for, losing the election.

Well, this notion that a Californian's vote is worth less than a Wyomingan's (Wyomingite's?) vote is really rather academic. Under the current system, your individual vote just doesn't matter very much at all, no matter where you live, unless you live in a "battleground" state. In this past presidential election, for instance, you had a much better chance of swinging the election with your vote if you lived in Ohio, Florida, or Virginia than if you lived in either California or Wyoming.

Now, of course, in a popular vote system, those same sorts of geographic considerations wouldn't play a role. But presidential campaigns would still focus on certain geographic areas and ignore others -- it's just that they would focus on different areas than they do now. Campaigns would pretty much ignore small states and concentrate on large urban areas. McCain wouldn't have spent much time in Iowa, for example, and Obama wouldn't have bothered to set up field offices in Montana, because there just aren't very many voters in those states -- at least not in comparison with places like Los Angeles or New York City or Chicago. Of course, some people would see that as an advantage -- as I noted before, I take no sides.

Robert Gentel wrote:

That's a pretty big disadvantage. With the system, their popular choice and the country's popular choice lost. Without the system they would have won. And in every election, they have the disadvantage of having a vote worth less than some of other citizens.

The 2000 election, without question, demonstrated a significant defect of the electoral college system. But then, as I have mentioned before, that election would have posed a major problem for any system, including a popular vote system. It's not at all clear that, had there been a popular vote system in place in 2000, Gore would have necessarily won.

Robert Gentel wrote:

That's part of what I don't like about the electoral college. It only directly impacts the result in close elections so it's largely symbolic the rest of the time, making some more equal than others without changing the end result. When it does come into play it overturns the will of the people in favor of the will of the more equal people.

Two points about that: (1) there have been, at most, three elections since 1804 where the popular vote winner was the electoral vote loser: 1824, 1888, and 2000. Popular vote totals prior to about 1900, however, are generally unreliable, due to a variety of factors, so we will never know if Harrison really lost the popular vote to Cleveland in 1888 (1824 was a freak election, and those conditions will likely never be repeated). So we can only say, with some degree of confidence, that it was the 2000 election that saw the popular vote winner lose in the electoral college. That's not an optimal result, I'll admit, but given the system's overall track record, it's clearly an aberration.

(2) Equating the results of an election with the "will of the people" ignores all of the other parts of a democratic system that are also just as much the products of the "will of the people." For instance, the constitution is just as reflective of the "will of the people" as any election result, and the twelfth amendment is part of the constitution. So to say that the electoral college can overturn the "will of the people" is favoring the transitory expression of the popular will over its systemic expression. I'm not convinced, however, that the former is necessarily a better or more accurate expression of the popular will than the latter. In other words, if people want the electoral college, then they also want results that occasionally look like the 2000 election.

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@BillRM,

You do know on the flip side is the fact that hundreds of thousands of lives were lost to try to end the union also<grin>

I think you meant preserve, not end, the union, but then who knows.

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I think this democracy nonsense is outdated: I suggest a more American way would be for wealthy interest groups to buy the positions of power in a formal bid then get a stooge to represent them.
You might even get a representative of the oil industry in church and foreign policy decided by arms manufacturers
Oh---you've got that system already.

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@Fountofwisdom,

Fountofwisdom wrote:

I think this democracy nonsense is outdated: I suggest a more American way would be for wealthy interest groups to buy the positions of power in a formal bid then get a stooge to represent them.
You might even get a representative of the oil industry in church and foreign policy decided by arms manufacturers
Oh---you've got that system already.

You are advising Americans? Based on your British spelling from prior posts, I wonder if you know enough to advise the U.S.?

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The main argument against electoral college is that it results in bad leaders: I would suggest that if George W is really the cream of the crop then America really is in trouble.
America was the last country to abolish slavery. It did nothing to stop the Nazis. (America entered WW II, because of pearl harbour), It didnt sign up to Kyoto, or the World Court. Its is so morally bankrupt it wont even sign the convention against torture. Or land mines. Or cluster bombs. (you get the idea.)
The language is English not British.

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@Fountofwisdom,

Actually the last country in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery was Brazil in about 1871.

Britain did nothing to stop the Nazis when it could easily have done so (indeed it had a right to do so under the 1919 Versailles Treaty which it imposed on Germany) - and lived to regret it later.

America was a bit disillusioned after its experience of being duped into foolishly entering WWI by British propaganda and a self-important but weak-minded President (Wilson). We actually noticed the fact that as we poured troops into the Western Front, Britain and France withdrew nearly equal numbers to complete their ill-conceived conquest & colonization of the Middle East. We are still dealing with the awful consequences of British imperialism and European hypocrisy today - from Palestine to Pakistan.

European complacency and self-satisfaction are matched only by their hypocrisy and forgetfulness of their ghastly histories.

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Let's get rid of the Electoral College

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