Rendering The Electoral College Obsolete

Sometimes, I get the feeling that some people believe that the founding fathers of our country were incapable of making mistakes. (I usually get that feeling whenever I hear or read something Justice Scalia said.) Many times, people use the founding fathers as an excuse or "support" for their beliefs as if the founding fathers were human infallible.

Now, I truly appreciate that the founding fathers have us the incredibly strong foundation upon which a great country was built, but to think of them as infallible is just infantile. Their misguided, racist, misogynistic views on race and gender allowed for deplorable policies like the continuation of slavery, the hypocritical three-fifths compromise, the mistreatment of native americans, the denial of women's suffrage, and the second-class citizenship of anyone who wasn't a white, male landowner.

While there have been many successful attempts to correct the mistakes of our founding fathers throughout our nation's history, there are still problems they created that have not yet been rectified. Two of these problems are blaring failings in our devotion to democracy. These failings are the Electoral College and the denial of representation in the House of Representatives and in the Senate for the citizens of Washington, D.C. (Washington, D.C. does have a Congressperson in the House of Representatives, but that position does not have the ability to vote in Congress.)

Fortunately, there are organizations who are trying to correct these inadequacies in our democracy, and in Maryland, progress was made in rendering the Electoral College obsolete (As for the D.C. issue, visit DCVote.org for more information on their campaign to support voting rights for Americans in D.C.):

Maryland sidesteps Electoral College

ANNAPOLIS, Md. --Maryland officially became the first state on Tuesday to approve a plan to give its electoral votes for president to the winner of the national popular vote instead of the candidate chosen by state voters.

Gov. Martin O'Malley, a Democrat, signed the measure into law, one day after the state's General Assembly adjourned.

The measure would award Maryland's 10 electoral votes to the national popular vote winner. The plan would only take effect if states representing a majority of the nation's 538 electoral votes decided to make the same change.

If our country was a true democracy, the Electoral College would not exist, Gore would have won the 2000 election without any need for a recount, and Bush would not have become president. Unfortuately, even though the Electoral College system is unfair, unpopular, and not democratic, ridding oursleves of it would take a Constitutional amendment which would be very difficult to pass because Republicans think that fair elections will hurt their chances in presidential elections. I do not know why they think fair elections will hurt them, but what does it say about a party if they are against fair elections?

Hopefully, enough states follow Maryland on this issue, and then we can bypass the Electoral College entirely. Then, perhaps, we will prevent another disastrous presidency like that of George W. Bush.