Article II, section 1, of our Constitution deals with our president being elected. That portion of section 1 is too long for this blog, but you can read it here. This site contains the entire Constitution with no commentary. According to the histories that I have read, the electoral college was created because the founders of our country did not fully trust the “common people” to make an educated choice for president. According to the website Constitution Center, “On June 21, 1788, the Constitution became the official framework of the government of the United States of America when New Hampshire became the ninth of 13 states to ratify it. The journey to ratification, however, was a long and arduous process.”
Enough history! The Republican Party is currently working in the swing states to use Article II, section 1 to ensure that the United States’ next president will be a Republican. The rationale is that they are restoring presidential elections to what the United States’ founders wanted presidential elections to be. If they had done this before the last presidential election, our current president would be President Trump.
The popular vote across the United States was 51.3% for Biden and 46.9% for Trump. The vote figures are 81,283,361 for Biden and 74,222,960 for Trump with 2,924,869 voting for various other people. It’s clear to the Republican Party that they are slowly losing more and more elections because more and more people are voting Democratic for various reasons. They see that winning key states in the electoral college means they can remain in power in terms of presidential elections even if they lose the popular vote. They’ve already seen that happen in the case of Bush versus Gore and have learned the lesson well.
This is a great danger to our democracy. We did not want to tamper with a Constitution and eliminate the electoral college. It means that we will have 18th-century thinking ruling 21st-century elections. What are we going to do? That’s up to you.
