{"id":45112,"date":"2020-11-14T23:08:34","date_gmt":"2020-11-14T23:08:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=45112"},"modified":"2020-11-14T23:08:34","modified_gmt":"2020-11-14T23:08:34","slug":"dont-ditch-electoral-college","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=45112","title":{"rendered":"Don’t ditch Electoral College"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By JOHN KANELIS \/ johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Call me a fuddy-duddy if you wish, or old-fashioned, or even a “strict constitutional constructionist.”<\/p>\n

I am not going to climb aboard the\u00a0 vessel that seeks to throw out the Electoral College.<\/p>\n

You see, I happen to like the way we elect presidents. It’s the method concocted by the nation’s founders. Their intent was to create a more equitable distribution among the states. They intended to give more sparsely populated states a greater voice in selecting the president.<\/p>\n

Has it worked perfectly? Well, no. It hasn’t. However, name any government policy that works perfectly and I’ll be willing to consider buying that bridge you’re offering to sell me.<\/p>\n

I traveled to Greece in November 2000. You’ll recall how that election was hung up in the courts for weeks after Election Day. The Supreme Court ended up settling it with a 5-4 vote. Al Gore had more actual votes than George W. Bush, but Bush became president.<\/p>\n

I had the challenge in 2000 of trying to explain to my Greek friends — most of whom are highly sophisticated government-watchers — how someone can collect more votes than the other guy but lose the election. I sought to explain as best I could the founders’ vision of what the Electoral College was intended to do. I think I made my point then.<\/p>\n

Still, the debate rages on, even after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in both the actual vote and the Electoral College.<\/p>\n

OK, the system ain’t perfect. In 2016, Hillary Clinton collected nearly 3 million more votes than Trump, but she lost. We have the Bush-Gore election of 2000. Grover Cleveland outpolled Benjamin Harrison, but lost the 1888 election. Samuel Tilden lost the presidency in 1876 to Rutherford B. Hayes in the same fashion.<\/p>\n

By and large, though, the system works as the founders intended.<\/p>\n

Consider that Nevada became a battleground this time around; it was just as critical to Biden winning as, say, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

I am just not ready to toss the Electoral College system on its ear because of an occasional hiccup.<\/p>\n\n

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By JOHN KANELIS \/ johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com Call me a fuddy-duddy if you wish, or old-fashioned, or even a “strict constitutional constructionist.” I am not going to climb aboard the\u00a0 vessel that seeks to throw out the Electoral College. You see, I happen to like the way we elect presidents. It’s the method concocted by the nation’s … Continue reading Don’t ditch Electoral College<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1551,6680],"class_list":["post-45112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","tag-electoral-college","tag-popular-vote"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45112"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45114,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45112\/revisions\/45114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}