Reply #20: MT: Bypassing Electoral College an intriguing idea [View All]

[rumpel]

Great Falls Tribune

Some eloquent defenses of the Electoral College exist, but most of them in this day and age come across as elaborate rationalizations.

When people find out how the system actually works, they are surprised, if not shocked.

And most Americans got a crash course in how the system actually works in 2000, when after more than a month of wrangling George W. Bush won the presidency via the Electoral College but lost the popular vote to Al Gore.

It almost happened again in 2004, when Bush won the popular vote by about 3 million, but could have lost in the Electoral College if 60,000 more Ohioans had voted for John Kerry.
Much election reform has occurred since then, including cleaning up many mechanical irregularities and inconsistencies in the voting system. The Help America Vote Act is the primary manifestation of that effort. For the most part HAVA has been a success.

But that pesky Electoral College, written into the original Constitution, remains as a clumsy memorial to the founders' belief that they had to protect the landed aristocracy from the hazards of majority rule.

http://www.greatfallstribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070202/OPINION01/702020319