DOES ONE PERSON ONE VOTE ELECTS THE PRESIDENT?

THE CATASTROPHE OF THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE ON DEMOCRACY.

Presidents are not elected by the popular vote.   President are determined by the number of electoral votes they receive from the electoral college.

When you go to the pole you are not voting for a President but for an Electoral College “elector” to be determined by your party leaders (whoever they are.)

The founding fathers decided that the people were not reliable or smart enough to determine the outcome of an election for the head-of-state, so they devised a system where party leaders could put their finger on the scales to affect an outcome acceptable to the political elite. 

Here is how it works.   Each state is allowed the number of votes equal to their number of Representatives and Senators.

 

Here is the rub: Representatives are determined by the population of the state, but every state has two Senators.  That means the North Dakota with a population of half-a-million gets two votes for their senators and California with a population of thirty-seven-million also get only two votes that represent their senators.   This supposedly levels the playing field for states with small populations; but it also means that the will of the people – the popular vote – is devaluated. 

So, when I cast my vote here in Maine I am voting for someone that I don’t know to choose someone else that I don’t know to represent me in the Electoral College in the hope they will vote for the person I voted for.

The problem with this system is that by the end of this year, two Presidents that were not elected by popular vote will have replaced five members of the Supreme Court.     What kind of fucking democracy is this?

the Ol’Buzzard

VOTING DAY NOVEMBER 3rd.

It is off season, off track voting day here in western Maine.   My wife and I were talking about it last night.   Young people tend not to vote:   they are too busy and not particularly interested.   For the young, voting falls someplace beneath getting laid, getting drunk, getting married, having kids, working to make ends meet…  

 I hate to admit it but I didn’t vote until I was almost forty…getting laid, drinking, hell raising, military deployments…    and my wife was almost thirty before she voted: just living life seemed too complicated to worry about politics – which everyone knows you can do nothing about anyway. 

We vote now.   It comes with age.   Though I am still not convinced that it solves any problems.  I always vote for the less objectionable politician.   (Obama was the exception: I really liked him).   But, the government is so packed with politicians whose only aspirations is to remain in office at all cost – that the best you can do is to hope that the less objectionable party remains in control.  

Politicians spend the majority of their time raising money to finance their campaigns to convince you to vote for them.  Their allegiance is to the wealthy donors, and not to the voters.     The title Senator and Congressperson is as close to a royalty class as there is in this country – and politicians will say anything and vote anything in order to secure their position.

 The government has always been an oligarchy disguised as capitalism and run by the wealthy overlords, and it will always remain an oligarchy.

‘We The People” (us) are only duped into believing that we have some control on the outcomes.   Bush became President, though he did not win the popular vote.   Congress is full of gerrymandered Congress Persons.  To say the system is rigged is a fair conclusion.  

Political parties vie for control by placating and manipulating their selected demographics.   Then when they get in office the party serves the overlords and the politicians live to secure their own positions.

A government “Of the people, for the people and by the people” can only exist in a utopian socialist world.   Of course, true socialism can’t exist because the people in charge would vie for power and fuck it up.

I will go down and vote today, because that gives me the right to complain. 

Either way, we will inherit the wind.

the Ol’Buzzard

VOTE 2016

I have got to admit: I love the Republican Party and its Presidential contenders.   The Republicans keep the race for President interesting, otherwise there would be no sense in following the preceding.

After all, ‘we the people’ don’t actually elect the President.   The Founding Fathers, all those years ago, realized that the population at large wasn't intelligent enough to be trusted with responsibility of picking a head of government;

 so they established the Electoral College that could override the popular vote to insure that only quality people would hold the office – and that worked out well.

I am over half way through my seventh decade, and I have never known anybody who knew anybody that knew someone that actually knew a person in the Electoral College.

In this age of computers and cell phones, on-line elections of one person/one vote could be held and counted in a matter of hours.   The technology is here to do that.  It would be as simple as clicking a box to indicate your choice and hitting SEND.   If I can file my income tax securely on-line I should be able to vote on-line.

In the meantime, I will cast a vote next year – if I am here – at my age that is always a proviso; but, I have no expectation that my vote will actually be a determinant in the election of the President; since Presidential elections are actually determined by mysterious machinations of money, people of influence, political party maneuvering and scheming – all hidden under the umbrella of the ‘popular vote.’

the Ol’Buzzard