LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Electoral College ‘creates more problems than it addresses’

In respect to Mr. George Roof’s letter “The chasm between liberal socialists and conservatives,” dated 20 Dec. in the Delaware State News, wherein he stated he loves a good debate because “it gets his juices flowing,” I am inclined to cite that that is very American of him. It is through our First Amendment rights to open conversation on issues that is foremost among our nation’s governmental structures that have made the United States great and had kept her a First World power since the 19th century. Contrary to what Mr. Roof expressed in the aforementioned letter, I, for one, did write that the Constitution was drafted by our forebears to be “a living document amendable to the will of the people.” It was thus written because our forefathers took it from worldly examples that, if a government could not be altered peacefully, it would surely be broken on the wheel of rebellion. Our revolution, which the British yet regard as a civil war, brought asunder here the status quo of the world’s pre-eminent power of that era. I would like to engage in the social experiment of a popular-vote precedence because, after all, the United States was conceived of as a social experiment by profound thinkers of the 17th century. Indeed, the seeds of our revolution were sown much earlier than that, as learned people such as Mr. Roof should understand. As a futurist, I look at the past as I peer into the future and have decided that the Electoral College creates more problems than it addresses, and not because we live in interesting times with a bunch of grasping crybabies. It has always been a problem, although, in order to contrarily convince the unaware, manipulative people like to dress up the prevailing sentiment of the era in which Lincoln was elected and the unrest prompted by other such instances. Do not get me wrong: Lincoln was a marvelous president and seemingly the right person for the job at the time. So, it makes me wonder how he got there, since he was not in the least bit popular. From my childhood onward, the more I learned about the Electoral College, the more I began to wonder exactly who is running this country. Although I am not a half-baked conspiracy theorist, through investigation, I arrived at the conclusion that my vote doesn’t count in presidential elections. I think anyone who believes otherwise is suffering a delusion, perhaps happily. The problem we face today is an executive branch that is becoming increasingly more powerful, and that is deeply disturbing to me because someone is putting these people in office, and I believe it isn’t the voters at large. What would Mr. Roof do, have us continue on with this charade? Why not forgo the cost and disband the illusions generated by the process, and have our legislative branch elect our presidents for us? After all, as Mr. Roof illustrated, “we’re a Republic.” We can’t do that, though, because that would limit the number of people one would have to either impress or intimidate in order to secure their votes, and that smacks of some other scary governments in the world. Therefore, the only solution to the problems caused by the Electoral College is to change the system over to a popular-vote precedence within the legal parameters of the Constitution of the United States, which has been, since its inception, the most nearly perfect construct of a government the world has ever seen. I have said it before and I will say it again: that is not likely going to happen anytime soon. But don’t think I am impressed by fairy tales with happy endings or intimidated by intellectual tyranny.

Carol Hotte Felton