Wednesday 3 April 2019

Getting Rid of the Electoral College

First, is it actually possible?  You'd have to write an amendment out, and get it passed via one of two methods: (1) Getting a two-thirds vote via BOTH the House and Senate or (2) getting the legislation passed by three-quarters of the state legislatures.  The odds of either agreeing and passing the end of the Electoral College?  Pretty much zero. The Democrats may have 235 members in the House, but way short on the two-thirds number required.  The odds that all 235 would agree to dump the Electoral College?  If you were a southern Democrat, you'd find some voters who question the value of this idea.

Second, lets say you got the vote and accomplished this.....dumping the Electoral College.  What really happens over the next three election cycles after that? 

My humble belief is that people would begin to realize that it's the population centers of five states (California, Texas, Florida, Illinois, and New York) that matter.  So people in lesser states (like Oregon or Tennessee) would see reasons to skip voting.  It wouldn't matter if you were Republican or Democrat.....you'd just see this as a wasted cause.  This in turn, would affect local and state offices. You could actually have a state election in Mississippi where only 35-percent of the registered voters showed up, and the bulk of the state's voters simply skipped the election.

Somewhere down the line....maybe in a dozen years, you'd find that maybe a quarter of the normal voters simply refused to participate, and the President's election was mostly considered a 'joke'.  Then, the most unlikely scenario would occur....you'd have a comedian who'd run as an independent, and shock both himself and the political establishment....by winning. You can view this scenario underway in the Ukraine (yes, the comedian is actually considered a prime candidate to win now).

Opening up a bigger mess?  In the end, if we got to this termination of the Electoral College, it'd be brought back within twenty years, to resolve and fix things. 

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