GOP Is Trying To Rig The Electoral College

The graphic above (from Wikipedia) shows the electoral college vote in the 2012 election (weighted by the size of each state's electoral vote). It does not paint a pretty picture for Republicans. And it does not give them a lot of hope for better results in future presidential contests -- since their policies have alienated large segments of the American population.

A reasonable person would conclude that the Republicans need to moderate some of their policies, and move back toward the beliefs of most mainstream Americans. But reasonable is not a word current Republicans have much use for, and they are far too tied to their extreme ideology (since the teabaggers took over their party). So what can they do to give themselves a chance in future elections?

It looks like the Republicans have decided that if they can't win an election fair and square, then it is time for them to change the rules to favor their own party. Some blue states(those that voted for President Obama in the 2012 election) have a Republican-controlled government on the state level. The Republicans have decided to change the rules of the Electoral College (which currently awards all of a state's vote to the candidate that gets the most votes in that state), and award electoral votes according to congressional district in those states.

In states like Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, that would give the Republican candidate a significant number of electoral votes even if they lost those states again -- and it could be enough votes to swing the presidential electoral college vote in their favor, and allow them to reclaim the White House. Of course, they don't want to do the same thing in red states (like Texas and the Deep South states), because that would give more votes to Democrats. And since they only want this change to happen in blue states, that means they are trying to "rig" the election in their favor. In plain language, they know they can't win a fair election so they want to steal the next presidential election.

This is just one more good reason to dump the electoral college system. When a political party tries to rig the system to steal an election, then that archaic system has lost its usefulness. I really don't know why we still have the Electoral College anyway. In most, if not all, other democracies, the candidate with the most popular votes is the winner in a leadership election.But in this country, a candidate who loses the popular vote can still become president by winning states with enough electoral votes to give him/her an electoral vote majority (and that has happened several times in this nation's past, including as recently as the 2000 election).

And I believe most Americans would be happy to get rid of the Electoral College, and let the winner of the popular vote become president (as we do in all other elective offices in the United States). That is shown by the results of a recent Gallup Poll, conducted on January 8th and 9th. That poll showed that 63% of Americans say they would vote to do away with the Electoral College, while only 29% would vote to keep it. And that sentiment gets a significant majority across all party lines and age groups. Here are those numbers:

It is time to do away with the Electoral College. Both our votes and our democracy are too precious to let a political party (any political party) rig an archaic system so they can steal an election. The very idea of that should be abhorrent to all Americans.