What if I was to tell you that there is a secretive group of elite individuals that are responsible for choosing who becomes president of the United States, and that your vote really doesn’t count. This sounds like trailer of a Hollywood conspiracy movie, but it’s actually true. The elite group is THE ELECTORAL COLLAGE.
A little background:
>Way back when this country’s constitution was originally being drafted, America’s forefathers didn’t have a lot of faith in the average man’s ability to elect a decent leader. At the time, the country’s population consisted largely of farmers and frontiersmen who had little means to keep up with all the political issues. Many couldn’t even read or write. “What we need is some smart people to pick our leader,” thought the forefathers. So, with much deliberation and debate, the designers of our constitution came up with THE ELECTORAL COLLAGE.
Each state gets one electorate for every Congressman and Senator they have. These electorates collectively form the electoral collage, and they are the actual people who pick the president. (Not you! Sorry.) The way these electorates are chosen is up to each state. Nowadays, the electorates are pledged to vote for certain presidential candidates. When the average Joe is at the poles casting their vote, contrary to how the ballots appear, they AREN’T voting for the president. They’re voting for which electorates vote for president. It is important to know also that the electorates don’t have to vote for the candidates that they’ve been pledged to vote for. They can vote for whomever they choose. Just because one candidate is chosen in the popular vote, doesn’t mean that that candidate has to be chosen by the electoral college.
We don’t live in a democracy
In a true democracy, every citizen’s vote is equal. In America, we vote for mystery people (electorates) to vote for us. These people are supposed to be more educated on the issues and the candidates than what the average American is able to be. In this age of communication that we’re supposed to be living in; in this age of high speed Internet, that a person in Timbuktu can communicate with someone in Toronto about the speech that is going on in New York, I’d like to know where the electors get all their privileged information. The worst part is that most Americans don’t even know that the electoral college is composed of actual people. (Which is a strong argument as to why we still need them.)On top of that, very, very few people know who the electorates of their state are comprised of. Do you?
If I were the Emperor of the United States…
First of all, there wouldn’t be voting, because I would be all powerful, but I’d like to leave a fair system for after I’m gone. I would eliminate the electoral college system, and return the power to the people. Every vote would be equal. Period.
This Video is a clip from “Weeds.”
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Here’s an even funnier SouthPark episode about voting.
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