SHOULD THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE BE ABOLISHED?

The census figures were released, and for the first time ever (happens every 10 years) California lost a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.  If New York had only counted 89 more people, they would not have lost one.  Instead, it would have been Minnesota:

Both liberals and conservatives seem concerned that the 7.4% growth, the smallest since those Depression years in the 1930's, should be a national concern.  Hawaii grew by 7%.  Many others feel that population growth is the biggest problem today facing humanity, right up there with global warming.

• 
  Paul Ehrlich released Population Bomb 53 years ago.
• This all started with Thomas Malthus in 1798.
• However, last year, like the attitude of some noteworthy Americans today, there was a sense that a world population which did grow fast enough would actually cause problems. 
• You can still purchase a hardcover of the original PB from Amazon.com for $124.50.

• 
  Four years later in 1972 came Limits to Growth, blaming population growth for using up world resources. 
• The original paperback can still be had from Amazon.com for $99.99.
• Their 30-year update in 2004 has a hardcover price of $1002 today.  
• Basically the authors said they were right.
• Then ten years later in 2014, another oversight indicated that the second version was correct.
• More recent assessments have again concluded that the book was right.
• Lesson?  Keep important hardbacks.

Earlier this month the CDC indicated that fully vaccinated Americans can safely enjoy traveling again.  Today, they loosened up restrictions again:

Here is the problem.  They keep piecemealing us to death.  But more so, this administration has settled on providing sound arguments about why everyone should be vaccinated.  That is not working.  We should eventually reach a herd immunity of 70%, but is that enough?  President Joe Biden should work with the private sector and religious organizations to ONLY ALLOW THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN SAFELY VACCINATED (meaning two weeks after both Pfizer/Moderna and one Johnson&Johnson) to enter a Federal building, eat at restaurants, attend indoor church services / auditorium sports events, and board cruise ships, airplanes, buses and trains.  

A critical percentage of Americans will only get vaccinated if they can't travel, attend concerts/movies and go out to eat.  Need overcomes illogic every time.  Unconstitutional?  Probably. But this is a war on a virus which requires extraordinary measures.

So, then, what about the Electoral College?  Five times in history presidential candidates have won the popular vote, but lost the Electoral College vote.

In the 1787 Constitutional Convention, our founding fathers were forced to compromise to come to any conclusion:

• 
  Hard to believe, but in those days, no country in the world had ever directly elected its president.
• Interestingly enough, there then were no political parties.
• They clearly did not trust the voting public.
• Large states wanted a Congress based on population, while smaller states wanted equal representation.  This is why we have two bodies as the Great Compromise.
• But then, how do you count slaves?  Another compromise came that a slave was worth two-thirds of a real citizen.
• Felt that the people, not the Congress, pick the president, but ended up having the House of Representatives select the president under  especially peculiar circumstances.  

• 
  This actually happened for the presidency of John Quincy Adams (the one in the middle--note that five people ran), who had actually lost both the popular and electoral votes in 1824 and Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, when even the House couldn't come to a conclusion, so a special Federal Electoral Commission was created.

• 
  Today, with only two parties of importance, it is clear that the House will be the final determinator if the Electoral votes end up in a tie.
• However, all the effort of Donald Trump now shows that even this process could be flawed if something illegal is attempted.

So from the beginning, the electoral process kept evolving to what we have today:

• A candidate needs to capture 270 of the 538 electoral votes, which is the sum of all two senators from each state and the number in the House of Representatives.
• A tie of 269-269 would send the process to the House of Representatives, giving larger states the advantage.
• However, with the current Electoral College, states with smaller populations end up having greater representation.  Wyoming, for example, only has 570,000 residents, but has one representative.  California has 53 representatives, each for more than 700,000.

Just before the latest presidential election last year, a Gallup poll showed that:

• 61% of Americans preferred amending the Constitution to use the popular vote to elect the president.
• 89% of Democrats and 23% of Republicans favored the popular vote.
• Over the past two decades:

So why won't the Electoral College be abolished?  Just like attempting to repeal the Second Amendment for gun control, there is a requirement of support from two-thirds of both houses of Congress and three-fourths of the 50 states.  Is this good or bad?  Great for me, as I live in a small state, Hawaii.  In any case, we will need to live with the Electoral College for a long time to come, and continue to suffer from the obsolescence of the 2nd amendment for gun control.

In 2016 I reported:

Shohei Ohtani not only led the Pacific League in strikeouts (132 on 108 innings), he is a hitting star.  His fastball has been clocked at 103 MPH, and he bats third with a .341 average.  He led the Fighters to the Japan Series Title this year, with an ERA of 1.86, while hitting 22 homers with a league-high 1.004 OPS.  Shohei is 22 years old.  The last prominent player who went both ways was Babe Ruth in 1919.  

Well, yesterday:

Shohei Ohtani struck out nine after a shaky first inning on the mound, and also scored three runs and drove in two in a start like none since Babe Ruth 100 years earlier, as the Los Angeles Angels beat the Texas Rangers 9-4 on Monday night.

-