ÌìÃÀÊÓƵ

Liberal friends, Hillary supporters, and countrymen/women, I come to to bring you one simple message: the Electoral College is your friend. It is not a useless anti-democratic appendage from yesteryear. In fact, it is the fourth branch of government, and it has the potential to still prevent a Donald Trump presidency.

Not many people understand it. This includes various modern-day Congresses, presidential campaign managers, former presidential candidates, former presidents and presidential candidates who once taught constitutional Law, pundits with advanced degrees in political science, and even writers on websites named after an aspect of the Electoral College itself.

For the record, there are 538 total electoral votes. States get an electoral vote for every elected congressional representative they have. The Constitution requires that the winner have a majority of those votes (270 or more). Otherwise, the election goes to the House of Representatives, and in that case each state delegation gets only one vote.

Also, the House of Representatives has to ratify the Electoral College vote. It is unchartered territory as to whether it must just count votes or has greater powers to not ratify the votes.

On Monday, Electoral College electors meet at their respective state capitols to vote. The states can allocate their Electoral College votes however they wish, as long as their process is constitutionally sound. Today, Nebraska and Maine allocate two electoral votes to the state’s popular vote winner, and then, one each to the popular vote winner in each congressional district in their state.

On your Nov. 8 ballot, you actually voted for Electoral College electors. These electors are usually supporters of a particular candidate, and are usually chosen by the state political party, but this does not have to be the case. Some states legally require their electors to vote according to the state’s popular vote under criminal penalty. But no one has been prosecuted under these laws even when electors have broken them.

The Federal Principle

We’re a federal democratic republic, which means, in part, that we are the united states of America. In this country, we require a federal political process — meaning that all the states together are part of that process. The federal principle is one of the fundamental structural principles of our Constitution.

Proposals to abolish the Electoral College are proposals to abolish the federal principle in presidential elections — to essentially nationalize them. All of our national elective offices are based on the federal principle — they are state-based elections because we are a nation of states.

That is why we have two senators per state and a number of representatives set for each state based on population size. It’s also why, if the Electoral College fails to come up with a candidate with the majority of electoral votes, then each state gets only one vote in the House of Representatives to vote for a president. It’s also why each state has one equal vote to amend the Constitution. We want all states to know that the rules of the process will allow for a true possibility of their most pressing needs to be met, and avoid majoritarian tyranny, rather than shifting majority coalitions that rise and fall.

If not, then states might actually secede from the union. United we stand. Divided we fall. Federalism still matters, and there is no popular swell of support to eliminate all these other mechanisms not tied to simple popular votes.

Constitution Doesn’t Mention Political Parties

In modern times, the parties have provided broadly popular presidential candidates. The purpose of parties and their primaries has been to provide money, logistical support, and organization to the candidates, while making sure they were introduced to voters. The process ensured that they had at least some basic level of popularity among the people.

This election, the parties were like titles for rent because presidential candidates don’t need much that they have to offer. Republican primaries were plagued with low voter turnout and winner-take-all states. Democratic primaries were plagued with exclusionary registration requirements (which excluded infrequent voters, first time voters, and independents), great difficulty in voting in some states due to polling locations and times, and a large number of super-delegates weighing in before the primaries even started.

The Founders Fathers worried about parties and campaigns failing. They wanted the Electoral College to pick people who could govern well. They wanted a process of electing a president that was akin to the British parliamentary system’s choosing a prime minister, but instead they took the vote out of the hands of Congress to avoid corruption and gave it to the Electoral College. They wanted representative democracy — not direct democracy.

This seems quite prophetic today when voter turnout drops because people are disgruntled, and even party regulars, and elites are overwhelmed by candidates who don’t need their money or organizational help. This year it resulted in a campaign of personalities — not issues.

How To Fix Things

There are frequent calls for eliminating the Electoral College and implementing a straight national popular vote. I oppose that. The popular vote doesn’t quarantine election rigging. For example, currently roughly 39 of the 50 states are Republican controlled, and the Republicans have shown a strong penchant for disenfranchising voters.

While disenfranchising voters in Ohio, Florida, and Wisconsin may perhaps swing the election using the current system, with a national popular vote all 39 states can pile on to disenfranchise even more voters. More importantly however, this behavior, or claims of election fraud in various pockets of America, could trigger a national recount — which could leave the election hanging well past the inauguration date; and/or the election would lose legitimacy, which is the whole point of having elections to begin with.

Instead, here’s how to fix the Electoral College.

States should pass laws allocating their electors by geographic contiguous districts well under 700,000 people. People who want to be electors should do the campaigning, not the candidates. Then these people will do what was intended for them to do — thoughtfully pick the best candidate based on the values of their district using the judgment the people who voted for them believe they have.

Not a popular vote, but still a representative democratic one that would focus on issues and governance rather than personalities and showmanship.

As for what should happen Monday in Electoral College, if electors, for instance think that, say, Ohio Gov. John Kasich ought to be president, then President Kasich it is. Democratic electors would have to vote en masse for a Republican in order to get enough electors to reach the needed 270 votes. Clearly, just depriving Trump of 270 votes would be insufficient, since the vote will go to the House and it would surely vote for Trump.

My proposal is a long shot, but the Electoral College, if nothing else, is the break-glass-in-case-of-emergency fourth branch of government. With global warming needing to be stopped or slowed immediately, and with the unprecedented amount of corruption and foreign influence that will be unlike anything seen before in U.S. history, and potential tyranny and oppression that will reach new lows, now, my Democratic elector friends, is the time to act.

If enough patriots stand up and vote as the Founding Founders intended — not as mail carriers of the popular vote to Congress, but as representatives of the people of their state, and exercise their good judgment, America, and the world, could be saved from the two major parties making huge mistakes. Parties which weren’t mentioned by the founders in the Constitution, and who seem to have hijacked the election, do not, and should not, supersede the Electoral College.