They do realize it wasn’t supposed to be a popularity contest, don’t they?

Aghast at the Electoral College

Unhappiness with the Electoral College is being encouraged by progressive venues everywhere.

So why not ask Congress to urge an amendment to get rid of it?

Because that has been repeatedly tried and the senate regularly refuses to go along, since the EC inflates the power of smaller states rather as does the senate, itself, though not as much.

Not to mention the unspoken thought that the constitution fairly read empowers the Electors to vote for whomever they please, still regarded by many whose enthusiasm for democracy is not boundless as an important escape hatch from popular delusions and the madness of crowds.

And what progressive, rejoicing in the still on-going sexual revolution in the law brought about in America entirely by runaway courts out of the reach of democracy, does not agree, in his heart of hearts, that too much deference to the will of the people might be a bad idea?

Anyway, there have been attempts to bind the choices of Electors by state law and even by the Supremes, but the truth is what it is and they are not bound by a blessed thing.

It is, according to the constitution, they who choose the president and the vice president, each Elector choosing in near-complete freedom, and nobody else.

See Article II, Section 1, this bit especially.

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress:  but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

See also Amendments XII and XXIII.

The people have no constitutionally prescribed role in the selection of the president at all, and the men of Philadelphia likely could not have found a majority of states willing to accept any particular manner of assigning them one.

Electors are appointed by the states in a number that is a compromise between the equality of all the states in the senate and representation proportional to population as in the house.

No amendment has taken from the states the power to appoint their Electors in whatever manners they may choose.

The people have a role only so far as the states have chosen to use elections to select their Electors.

Wikipedia reports,

During the first presidential election in 1789, only 6 of the 13 original states chose electors by any form of popular vote.

Gradually throughout the years, the states began conducting popular elections to help choose their slate of electors, resulting in the overall, nationwide indirect election system that it is today.

The truth is the manner of selection of federal judges and especially the Supremes is far, far more undemocratic than the manner of selection of the president.

And that is a piece of undemocracy and even anti-democracy far, far more consequential and outrageous than the trivial gap in practice between our current indirect election of the president and direct election by national, popular vote.

But yelling about the latter is a good way to distract the people and defuse chronic popular outrage, not at the presidency, but at the judicial despotism of the Supremes.

And liberals enjoy accusing Republicans of using “shiny objects” – in their judgment, phony issues – to distract the people from, again in their judgment, real issues.

From the article in The Week, quoting the New Yorker,

Here's how it works:

Suppose you could get a bunch of states to pledge that once there are enough of them to possess at least 270 electoral votes — a majority of the Electoral College — they will thenceforth cast all their electoral votes for whatever candidate gets the most popular votes in the entire country.

As soon as that happens, presto change-o: the next time you go to the polls, you'll be voting in a true national election.

No more ten or so battleground states, no more forty or so spectator states, just the United States — all of them, and all of the voters who live in them.

But the pledge is unenforceable since the Electors cannot be bound.

Which does not mean that everyone in the country who knows better cannot participate in this national exercise in deceiving the people, if not all of America’s classe politique, then anyway much of its chattering classes.

Who knows?

Even federal judges – even the Supremes – might join in with this particular, willful deception, self-deception, and egregious act of constitutional disobedience.

By the way, the author of the article seems to find it odd that the class of eligible voters is not the same as the class of persons counted in the census for purposes of determining representation in the house and hence the numbers of Electors to which states are entitled.

Non-citizens and large numbers of citizens not eligible to vote account for a large part of the latter class.

Always have.

Women, children, felons, the insane, etc.

Women?

Oh, wait.