The USA's ludicrous Electoral College system

I think most, if not all, people have made decisions that they either subsequently regret or acknowledge were mistakes. These range from minor (e.g., eating a food type that disagrees with one's digestive system) through moderate (a.g., a job that winds up being moderately frustrating) to major (e.g., moving to another nation that doesn't suit one). 

Sometimes decisions are out of one's hands - for instance, in my teens when my family moved to Queensland (which led to a mixture of good, bad, and indifferent outcomes for me, but suited my adoptive sister well). 

In most cases, when one realises a mistake, one generally remedies that - and thus I moved back to Victoria in my 20s, although my attempt to find something outside of engineering as a career wasn't successful (I trained in several massage techniques, but don't have a business orientation which meant trying to work as a "sole trader" didn't work for me).

And that brings us to the Unexceptional States of America, and it's ludicrous Electoral College "system". 

In the 1700s, that "system" - and voting on a Tuesday - may have made some sense at that time, although it seems at least several of the USA's "founders" regretted the Electoral College decision within a few years or decades, but it has since then become nothing but an absurdity that is an affront to democracy (along with their version of the filibuster) and shows a mental ineptitude that so undermines the USA's claim to exceptionality that said claim disappears out of sight on a landslide of the world's laughter into a ravine of ridicule. 

In the Aussie vernacular, the USA's Electoral College "system" fails the pub test. Others might term it comedic gold - or comedic cannon fodder. 

It's that bad, these days.

And I've just found someone wrote a book about this: James Michener, who wrote "Presidential Lottery: The Reckless Gamble in Our Electoral System" in 1969 based on his experiences in 1968 as an elector.

In this book, Michener describes the potential and actual problems of this system, including a staggering lack of awareness on the part of US voters of how the Electoral College system functions - which is actually sadly paralleled by too many Australians' ignorance of the role that the imposed agent of the British Monarchy, the Governor-General has - including that laws are NOT laws until the Governor-General signs them . . . and we haven't changed that for reasons including laziness, mental ineptitude, appallingly elitist options for change, and the aforementioned failure to understand the power that the Governor-General and thus the Queen of the United Kingdom has. (Re-labelling the Queen of the United Kingdom as Queen of Australia is a meaningless farce.)

Going back to Michener's book, he comments on the lack of knowledge and confusion:

"Any system which induces such misconception is dangerous"

In his book Michener examines a range of options for changing or eradicating the Electoral College, and the advantages and disadvantages of each. 

The alternatives include direct election - which, in my opinion, is the most democratic and common sense option, although it could be improved by also adopting preferential voting - and an independent electoral  commission. It also does have potential flaws, as Michener discusses, such as populism. These - along with other potential problems discussed in the book - have more recently been laid bare nearly half a century later by the USA's potus45 (and our weaknesses, such as relying on political conventions, need for human rights protections, etc have been laid bare by our Prime Marketer Scott). 

In my opinion, we in Australia need better education on "civics" and human rights protection to deal with such problems (and better mainstream media wouldn't hurt) - and we need to accept and deal with our historical bigotry. One of the people working on our Constitution  (Andrew Inglis Clarke) was well aware of the USA's Bill of Rights and wanted to include something like that, but everyone else wanted to be able to enshrine the bigotry known as the "White Australia" policy and actually contrived to leave him behind when they went on a boat to finalise everything (from Geoffrey Robertson's book "Bad People – and How to Be Rid of Them: A Plan B for Human Rights").

Interestingly, Clarke was one half of the Hare-Clark electoral system, which took a few attempts to be successfully introduced. 

And that raises the last point I wanted to cover about the USA's Electoral College: why hasn't it changed? 

Clarke needed several attempts and then was able to introduce a better way of voting; on the other hand, he was unable to get a Bill of Rights for Australia against the combined bigotry of others. 

The USA has made changes to its various voting systems, and changes to the Electoral College have been proposed (Michener, incidentally, favours improvements over options such as direct election in his book - which suffers from lack of awareness of the effects of discrimination), but no substantive changes to the Electoral College have been made - despite the clear need for improvement. 

Why? 

Some of it may be political circumstances, or the need for "pragmatic" compromises, and some of it may be a misbegotten "pride" in being different, but I suspect it goes further than that: I suspect too many people can see opportunities for them to have political influence, and they're unwilling to risk having to be part of what they possibly consider the "pack of mediocrity" - or, as I would term, the voter, or the everyday or non-elite person.

And changing the USA's system is up to the USA's everyday, non-elite voter - they have to advocate for change, and then vote on that change. 

And until they do, they are contributing to the dis-enfranchisement of themselves and, even more so, others votes that should be equal with theirs - not more or less weighty, equal.