Well, this election got me like….!
This will be my last post on this crazy, tumultuous election that has had more twists and turns than a Christmas episode of Eastenders.
As we all know I don’t speak for the whole of Brits in LA, or its partners, or the readers here and some of you may have voted Trump and that’s okay, But if you are a regular follower of mine and of this column, you would know I’ve been very much pro-Hillary throughout this whole cycle and what I’m about to say is an opinion piece.
We all have our opinions on where Hillary went wrong. It was the emails! It was the FBI! It was Bill’s affairs! She was a terrible debater! Wikileaks! Her lesbian affair with Yoko Ono! I never liked her! We should have chosen Bernie!
Although a lot of these may have added up and caused some to vote third party (or not at all), the truth of the matter is Hillary was the DNC party’s candidate and in this general election she won the popular vote by well over a million. That is huge. However, in America you don’t win the election by the popular vote, (cue folks scratching heads). This has caused some new citizens to ask ‘what’s the point in voting then?’ ‘What is this electoral college? Who are these people? How are they chosen and do they get degrees in stupidity for essentially allowing a misogynistic narcissist to become the leader of the free-world?’
It is a common misconception that the United States is a pure democracy, but American voters do not directly elect the president of the United States. Our systems is better described as a representative republic, and here is a brief explanation of how the electoral college works:
Every state has a number of electoral college members equal to the number of representatives and senators in that state. There is a minimum of 3 members, in states such as Alaska and Montana, and a maximum of 54 members in California. Securing a majority of 270 electoral votes (out of a possible 538) ensures that the candidate will go on to the White House. Therefore, a candidate can actually become president by winning the electoral contest but losing the popular vote – which is what cost Grover Cleveland the 1888 election, and more recently resulted in George W. Bush becoming president in 2000.
The electoral college was intended as a compromise between those who favored the election of the president by a vote of Congress and those who favored obeying a popular vote of the people. The founding fathers established the electoral college in the United States Constitution, believing that it would be both a buffer and provide fair power to all states regardless of size.
Ironically, modern critics find the winner-take-all approach of the electoral college unfair because it takes the vote out of the hands of the people and may fail to reflect the popular national will by unfairly skewing the importance of individual votes in certain states. The electoral votes are won wholly, county-by-county then state-by-state, regardless of whether a majority is decided by one vote or one million votes.
Those recent elections have proven the importance of the popular vote in the process of electing a president. The right to vote is the most basic bedrock of the freedoms we, as American citizens, have.
Outgoing California senator Barbara Boxer has written a bill to abolish the electoral college. We shall see how well that goes. As we know bills are hard to pass, but I commend and support her in this effort.
Someone just told me about the three ‘As’ to help me get over the hurt I’ve been feeling for the last few weeks: “Acknowledge, Accept and Action”.
Acknowledge what just happened.
Accept the outcome.
And then take Action.
America is one of the greatest countries in the world and am glad and grateful I get to live here. Especially in California. I am a huge advocate for equality. We aren’t there yet, so we keep fighting, taking it to the streets. Protesting does work, don’t listen to the people who call you whiners. If you feel passionate about something and want to cause change, get out there and take action. Feel that you have done everything to be a part of the movement. Left or right! (But hopefully for me and equality — Less right 😉
In other news my team won last Tuesday’s pub quiz – yay! Thanks to Sandro Monetti for hosting. I’ll be back in the hot seat November 29th – so come on by and have some fun!
Cheers!
Craig
