Letter to the Editor / MAJORITY RULES

By Roger C. Kostmayer

The Biden/ Harris team needs to be a fix-it administration, which is periodically necessary.  Obviously, protecting the lives and health of all Americans, fixing our damaged economy, addressing climate change and insuring racial justice are each urgent and important fixes that must start on day one.  But so is it critically important to continually protect and improve our democracy by fixing those things that are clearly out of whack.

For example, every elementary school child in America knows that at the end of a baseball game, the team with the most runs wins.  They also know with absolute certainty, that whoever gets the most votes in school is entitled to be class president.  So why doesn’t the world’s most powerful democracy do what every schoolchild knows is the simplest, most fair and democratic way – which is whoever gets the most votes from the most citizens wins our presidency?

Over the last 28 years (1992 -2020), there have been 8 presidential elections.  The Democratic candidate won the most citizen votes 7 times; the Republican candidates won the most votes once.  But, under old anachronistic Electoral College rules, the reality is that on two occasions (2000 & 2016) the candidate who won the most citizen votes, lost the election.

The simplest way to correct this obvious undemocratic flaw is to use the Electoral College to abolish – the Electoral College.  A non-partisan organization called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact has helped 15 states and the DC require their electors to vote for the candidate with the most votes.  Those states control 196 EC votes, and when that number grows to 270 (the number that elects a candidate) as more states join the compact, the problem may be solved.

[livemarket market_name="KONK Life LiveMarket" limit=3 category=“” show_signup=0 show_more=0]