America’s ‘Undemocratic’ Electoral College By Lekan Sote

When it looked like the normally rubber stamp American Electoral College might not affirm Donald Trump as President-elect, many admirers of America’s democracy were shocked to discover that the American people didn’t quite choose their President after all.

Uncle Sam’s emperor is probably wearing no democratic robes. And the so-called bastion of democracy lost its moral authority as the world’s evangelist of the democratic principle of one man, one vote. The Electoral College system is not it; or “no be am,” as the street would put it.

Anyway, political philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau’s submission that “the law which gives the majority of votes the power of deciding for the whole body,” didn’t say if the majority was of the electorate or their representatives. It’s bewildering that just 538 individuals, who may change their minds, are trusted to choose America’s President. A few, the “faithless electors,” actually didn’t vote as expected.

Some Democratic Party electors voted for non-candidates like Bernie Sanders, who lost their party’s primary to Secretary Hillary Clinton; Colin Powel, a former Secretary of State; and Faith Spotted Eagle, American aborigine and environmental activist. Michael Beca who voted John Kasich was dismissed, and replaced by an elector who voted Clinton.

In theory, electors should not affirm another candidate. But Trump’s abrasive conduct and caustic tongue put some Americans, including Republican Party partisans, off him. Some alleged that the election in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania states, were rigged against Clinton. More than five million online protesters joined the anti-Trump lobby.

It was a tough call, but Texan Republican Christopher Supron, a New York City firefighter, made good his vow to dump Trump. He declared: “I owe no debt to a party. I owe a debt to my children to leave them a nation they can trust.” Ten Republican electors from Wisconsin State, who affirmed Trump, were booed, “Shame!” by protesters.

Ray-Ellen Kay of the state of Pennsylvania, who correctly thought that it was nigh impossible to prevent Trump from gaining America’s White House, protested anyway. She confessed, “I knew nothing would come of this, but my conscience won’t let me do any less.”

Somebody should ask America’s Supreme Court if those Republican Party electors who didn’t affirm Trump are liable to a legal breach of promise, a failure to consummate a promise in order to induce an action in another. Should electors be free to affirm a candidate other than their party’s choice?

On Monday, December 19, 2016, America’s Electoral College formally confirmed Trump as President-elect. An obviously elated Trump chirped with magnanimity: “I will work hard to unite our country, and be the President for all Americans.” The Republic Party also gloated: “The historic election is now over. For the good of the country, Democrats must stop their cynical attempts to undermine the legitimacy of this election.”

If Trump had lost at the Electoral College, the House of Representatives, the lower arm of America’s legislature, would have been constituted into an electoral college to elect the President. But it would probably have been a shoo-in for Trump, whose Republican Party has a majority of the seats in the House of Representatives.

The electors are expected to forward their Certificate of Votes to the American Congress today, December 28, 2016, ahead of the January 6, 2017, meeting of the Senate that will formally ratify the tally of the vote by the Electoral College.

The Vice President, in his capacity as ceremonial President of the Senate, and leader of the legislative arm, will preside. One just hopes that some “nutter” will not come up with a “doctrine of necessity” excuse to scuttle the presidential apple cart. A USA Today/Suffolk University poll reports that 42 per cent of American voters prefer using only the American President, while 50 per cent want the Electoral College retained.

An electoral college is a body that elects others into office on behalf of a larger body. Examples are the college of Catholic Church cardinals who elect one of themselves as Pope. The princes and archbishops who elected German Emperors were also an electoral college. Delegates at political party primaries who choose candidates that will contest electoral offices formed an electoral college.

Under Kwame Nkrumah, the legislative arm acted as an electoral college for the election of what some political theorists cynically described as Ghana’s legislative President. Every candidate to Ghana’s Parliament would publicly endorse a presidential candidate. And the presidential candidate that garnered the highest number of successful legislative candidates was elected President.

It has been suggested that America’s special-purpose vehicle ensures that the federating states of America, and not the electorate, decide who becomes America’s President. Remember that leaders of the American Revolution elected that the original 13 American colonies should become the United States of America.

And that explains why Secretary Clinton, who won the popular vote by about three million votes, lost the presidency to Trump who won 306 of the 538 electors. The Electoral College is said to be a compromise between the US Congress and the electorate choosing the President. But of what use is that?

A few cynics have suggested a freak, but not totally implausible scenario of the mafia getting one of their dons elected as America’s President by a clever manipulation of political party primaries and the Electoral College. The mafia has already infiltrated, or is affiliated with, the political machine of some American cities.

A mafia don can become the presidential candidate of a political party by buying the delegates at primaries at the party convention. He would then send his goons to “persuade” the electors affirm him as their candidate for President.

He would then find a way to lean on the senators so that they would ratify the affirmation of the Electoral College. Remember how Napoleon used intimidation to be affirmed as the leader of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm?”

Critics of the parliamentary system disdain the fact that an individual can achieve the most nationally important position of Prime Minister by merely winning a parliamentary seat in his local constituency.

They are even more disappointed that the entire American geographical space that they thought was the constituency of America’s President is shrunken to the whims of some 538 individuals hunched in smoky rooms.

America may be a strong candidate for the oxymoron “democratic dictatorship of the few.” The American President emerges nearly in the same arbitrary manner that the Secretary General, and de facto ruler of the now-defunct Soviet Union, emerged from the deliberations of the inner caucus of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. That America has been a totalitarian state all along is a bit scary.

Some now think that they can explain why America supports despots who got to office by coup d’états, or refused to go when voted out. American Presidents, they aver, have never been chosen by the popular vote, but by a group beholden to some faceless political grandees. These cynics won’t quit their theory even if someone pointed out that the American electors were elected by popular vote.

Those who suggest that because the Electoral College system defeats the spirit of universal adult suffrage, think that Africa, and the rest of the developing world, should practise democracy that is consistent with their history, needs, values, and temperaments.

Twitter @lekansote1

Punch

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