The Election of the President of the United States by the People
A suggestion for aMending America
It is hard to believe that the American People tolerate a process for electing a president were the one with the most votes does not necessarily win. If we wanted one single justification of the ridicule that the rest of the world holds the US, that would be it. There is no democratic justification for baroque electoral process that makes the outcome of the election little more than a geographic accident. A system where a huge proportion of the voters’ choices can have no practical effect on the result, but a few hundred votes in a geographically fortuitous location can change the result.
I am sure that those who see benefit to themselves from the current system will find arguments to explain why the election of the US president cannot obey the most obvious and most simple rule of a democratic election, but I can’t see how the country can hold its head up in the world and claim to be a democracy unless it fixes this.
The most stupid counter argument I have heard (a crown that is hard fought for) is that in a close election might require a recount of the entire countries votes. While there are better ways to handle a close election, and indeed better processes for the election entirely, which I will get to later, a commitment to democracy pretty much comes hand-in-hand with the burden of counting votes. If we consider that burden to great to bear, we should skip the whole idea of democracy and have the president chosen by committee. We could call it the Supreme Court (although we tried that already). Even then, it would appear that according the way we currently elect presidents we would be sure when the court votes 4 to 5 whether it’s the ‘4’ or the ‘5’ that wins. May be we should just have one person choose the president; I’m sure Dick Cheney would be happy to do the picking, and I’m pretty sure I know who he’d pick. (For those readers who find this allusion too subtle, I remind you that the Republican party committee charged with selecting a running mate for GW Bush and that selected Dick Cheney was chaired by Dick Cheney.)
The candidate who is elected President shall be the candidate for whom the total number of votes cast by the people shall be the greatest.