Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Letter to the Editor:

Electoral College is worthless

In the George Will column titled “Electoral vote system imperfect but better than the alternative” (Las Vegas Sun, Dec. 22), he not only did not say what the alternative was, but he did not say for who it was better.

Who benefits from the electoral vote process? First, the candidates. The moment they realize they will carry the electoral votes by carrying a state’s popular vote, they stop spending and showing up. They work and spend in the “battleground states.”

The second group that benefits is the PAC groups. They pour money over these states like pancake batter over the griddle.

The one group that definitely would do better with the alternative — that is, no Electoral College at all — is the voters.

This time around, the winner of the popular vote is not being sworn in because of the distribution of voters across the Electoral College’s elector membership. If the electors did what they were put in place to do — evaluate the president-elect for capability, honesty, intelligence, respect for our place in the global community and any red flags that indicate this person would not or simply could not do this job — they would not have named Donald Trump to the presidency. This was a partisan exercise, plain and simple. It calls into question what the process is for naming these people.

Voters would be the beneficiaries of an election campaign in which the candidates had to earn the majority of the voters in the election, period. Would they have to work harder or smarter? Would it be more expensive? Yes. So what?

Trump came in 2.8 million votes behind. The electors did not do their job. In any court where a jury comes back with an outrageous verdict that is not rooted with facts in evidence, a judge will set the verdict aside. That is what the electors were supposed to do. Shame on them. The Electoral College is worse than worthless.

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