ISAAC NEWTON FARRIS JR

In American democracy, a presidential election is the only election when all American citizens get a chance to cast a vote for the same elected office, the President of the United States. But ironically it’s the only elected office in America, where the person can win the one-person-one-vote-counted popular vote and still might not become President of the United States. It’s the only elected position in America where a person can lose the one-person-one-vote-counted majority total by receiving the 2nd largest amount of votes cast, but still win the office.

Every 4 years on the first Tuesday in the month of November a presidential election is held enabling all Americans the right to vote to elect the President, their individual Congressperson, and most times one of their two U.S. Senators, this year’s election will be on November 5th. If things go as they should all persons running for the U.S. House or Senate, who receive 51% or a plurality of the votes cast on Nov. 5th, will be declared officially the elected winner of the office they ran for by Nov. 6^th. Regardless of the vote totals for Kamala Harris or Donald Trump neither will officially be declared the winner on November 5th or Nov. 6^th, however, based on how many votes Harris or Trump receives one of them will be designated by Nov. 6th as the one expected to be elected President.

The reason why Trump nor Harris will be officially declared the newly elected President, regardless of how many votes either of them receives on November 5th, is because the Founding Fathers established in the U.S. Constitution the Electoral College as the legal and official presidential election that determines who becomes the American President.

The Electoral College is made up of 538 electors who cast the ACTUAL votes that determine who is elected President. A person must receive 270 electoral votes to be elected. The 538 electors come from all 50 states and Washington D.C., each state’s number of electors is equal to the number of Congresspersons and Senators they have in the U.S. House and Senate. Each state has one elector for each Congressperson and one elector for each Senator and Washington D.C. gets 3 electors making the total 538. Each candidate running for President has their own pre-chosen slate of state electors which equals the amount of electors the state they are running in is allowed. Whichever candidate wins the majority of votes in each state election, their pre-chosen slate of electors will attend the Electoral College meeting and cast the actual votes in the official presidential election to elect their candidate President. The electors of each state meet in their respective state capital, more than a month after the November election, on the first Tuesday after the second Wednesday of December (between December 14 and 20) to cast the actual votes that determine who is elected President.

After the electors have met in December to cast their votes in the constitutional presidential election the results are certified by each state and Washington D.C., they are then sent to Congress, where they are tabulated nationally in the first week of January before a joint meeting of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. In the event that no candidate received the necessary 270 Electoral College votes, the House without the Senate would vote to decide who becomes President. Because the Founding Fathers feared that elected politicians would choose a President based on their personal political ambitions, as opposed to who would best serve the interest of American citizens, and because they also feared that temporary emotions and uncontrolled passions could prevent American citizens from choosing a President based on logic, the Founding Fathers created the Electoral College, as a compromise between a presidential election by a vote in Congress and a presidential election by a popular vote of the citizens.

Alexander Hamilton writes in The Federalist Papers that the point of the Electoral College is to preserve “the sense of the people,” while at the same time ensuring that a president is chosen “by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice.” James Madison worried about what he called “factions,” which he defined as groups of citizens who have a common interest in some proposal that would either violate the rights of other citizens or would harm the nation as a whole. Madison’s fear – which Alexis de Tocqueville later dubbed “the tyranny of the majority” – was that a faction could grow to encompass more than 50 percent of the population, at which point it could “sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens.”

The ignorance and gullibility concerns of Hamilton’s 18^th-century America have been muted by America’s 21st-century technology, a better-educated citizenry, the mainstream media, and the internet. Unfortunately, Madison’s 18^th-century “the tyranny of the majority” concerns are not muted and are still valid in 21^st-century America. There are plenty of examples of the tyranny of the majority at work in state legislatures throughout the country. From state legislators who control their state legislature gerrymandering election districts within their state to favor their political party, partisan majority legislatures passing repressive voting laws, partisan majority legislatures passing laws to restrict teaching America’s true racial history in public schools, to partisan majority legislatures manipulating the rules that determine who stays on the list of registered voters and who is removed, the tyranny of the majority is alive and well in many of America’s state legislatures.

The one scenario the Founding Fathers feared most, is a scenario that could easily occur today in 21st century America if the Electoral College did not exist. Over half (181,753,600) of America’s 345,427,000 population live in the 10 most populous states of California, Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, and Michigan. A candidate and their campaign could decide that a state like Wyoming with a population of less than a million people isn’t worth the effort. Instead, the candidate and campaign could decide it should focus only on the 10 most populated states, where 54% of the American population live, and win the election without having to campaign in the other 40 states. In other words, the millions of Americans living in the 40 ignored states would not have a presidential election campaign seek their votes, rendering their voices, opinions, and desires mute, and not conveyed to the person campaigning to formulate policy and make decisions that will impact their everyday lives.

Since the state of Iowa offers only 6 Electoral College votes to win, in an attempt to avoid being ignored it passed a state law that requires Iowa to hold the first presidential primary race in America. The law worked well inducing everyone running to be President, regardless of political party, to campaign in the tiny state of 3 million hoping to win America’s first presidential primary and gain huge momentum for their campaign. But for the 2024 primaries, the Democrat Party decided that because Iowa has a racial population that is over 80% American White and a combined American Black, American Asian, and American Hispanic population that is less than 15%, South Carolina should hold the first Democrat Party primary for President, hence for the first time since Jimmy Carter won the 1976 Iowa state primary Iowa has received hardly any attention in 2024 from Democrats campaigning to be President.

According to Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart the Iowa Democrats will have a chance to “compete strongly for a significant voice” in the 2028 Democrat Party presidential primaries. If Hart is serious about restoring Iowa’s voice in 2028, she and the Iowa state Democrat Party should convince the Iowa state legislature to follow the lead of Maine and Nebraska, the only 2 states in America where true presidential vote democracy exists, because no matter which candidate wins the Maine or Nebraska state popular vote, every Maine and Nebraska citizen’s voice is heard and every Maine and Nebraska citizen’s vote is counted when the Electoral College meets.

Currently, Maine and Nebraska are the only 2 states that award Electoral College votes to the candidate that wins the congressional district within their state. The other  48 states and Washington D.C. have a winner-takes-all rule for their Electoral College votes. In the 48 states and Washington D.C. whichever candidate receives a majority of the popular vote, or a plurality of the popular vote (less than 50 percent but more than any other candidate), is awarded all Electoral College votes. The U.S. Constitution allows each state and D.C. to choose between awarding Electoral College votes to candidates based on the winner-take-all or by the winner of congressional districts within the state.

If the 48 states and D.C. would follow the lead of Nebraska and Maine by allocating Electoral College votes to the candidate that wins their congressional district, would make all states viable hunting grounds for all candidates looking for Electoral College votes. No longer would campaigns focus only on battleground states, a state like Wyoming with just 3 electoral votes or Kansas with its 6 would no longer be overlooked, to the contrary they would be viewed as places where 1 or 2 Electoral College votes could be picked off regardless of whether it’s a blue or red state. Awarding Electoral College votes by who wins the congressional district makes it worth the money, time, and effort for Democrats to campaign in red states and for Republicans to campaign in blue states, but more importantly, it guarantees that all Americans’ voices are heard and their votes count for something.

The 37,728,626 Americans who voted for Donald Trump in the November 3rd, 2020 presidential election held in Washington D.C. and the 24 states Joe Biden won on that day, had no voice represented and their votes were not counted when the Electoral College met the following December to officially elect Joe Biden President. Neither did the 27,745,983 Americans who voted for Joe Biden on the same day in the 25 states that Donald Trump won, have a voice represented nor their votes counted when the Electoral College met to elect Biden. This means a total of 65,474,609 Americans who voted for either Donald Trump or Joe Biden on November 3rd, 2020, had their voice silenced, and their democratic vote not counted when the Electoral College met the following December, to cast and count the votes that elected Joe Biden President of the United States, simply because they voted for a presidential candidate that loss their state’s 2020 presidential election. Awarding Electoral College votes by winner-take-all rules is the prime example of the political idiom “to the victor belong the spoils” to the loser none.

Conversely, the 168,696 Americans who voted for Donald Trump in the November 3rd, 2020 Maine presidential election that Joe Biden won, had a voice, and their vote counted when the Electoral College met the following December. The 176,468 Americans who voted for Joe Biden in the Nov. 3rd, 2020 Nebraska presidential election that Donald Trump won also had a voice, and their vote counted in the meeting of the December 2020 Electoral College. True presidential vote democracy existed for only 345,164 Americans in 2020, because they voted in the 2 states that award Electoral College votes based on the winner of congressional districts within their state, Maine and Nebraska. Those 345,164 American citizens had a voice present and their votes counted at the December 2020 Electoral College, even though the presidential candidate that they voted for lost their state’s 2020 state-wide presidential election, but their candidate did win a congressional district within the state.

Since a presidential election is the only election in America where the winner is not determined by who wins a majority of the popular vote, it’s no surprise that an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll of 1,628 U.S. adults, conducted on Sept. 27 – Oct. 1, 2024, found that 58% of Americans are concerned about voter fraud occurring in the November 2024 presidential election, but 80% of the same Americans were confident that their state or local government elections, whose results are determined by who wins the popular vote, would be fair and accurate this November. The fact that the person who wins the popular vote still might not become President, albeit with good and logical reasons, plants a seed of doubt about the fairness and accuracy of a presidential election.

Thanks to short-sighted politicians and ratings-driven political commentators inciting fear of racial change in America, the doubt seed of fairness and accuracy has germinated into full-grown weeds of deception and voter fraud in the minds of many, many Americans who are now confronting the reality that the racial voting majority in America will change in the next 10-15 years. The best way to eliminate and kill the weeds of voter fraud in the minds of American voters is an election system that gives all voters, not just those who voted for the winner, but all voters a voice and vote in the final tally of election votes, be they general election votes or Electoral College votes. In other words, America’s presidential election system must be tweaked to create true presidential vote democracy.

The tweak that must be made to create true presidential vote democracy is for the 48 states and Washington D.C., who currently award all their Electoral College votes to the one candidate who wins their state-wide election, to follow the lead of Maine and Nebraska, by awarding their Electoral College votes to the one or multiple candidates that win each congressional district within their state or territory.

This is the only way to guarantee that all voting American voices and votes are heard and counted, regardless of who they voted for, in December when the Electoral College meets for the American Constitution-mandated presidential election that officially elects the President of the United States. Awarding Electoral College votes based on winner-take-all means only the winning majority of the state is present when the Electoral College meets guaranteeing sameness and exclusion, which creates questions about the propriety of a closed-door Electoral College meeting composed of 100% of people who politically agree with each other. Awarding Electoral College votes based on winning the congressional district within the state, means the losing minority of the state is present when the Electoral College meets guaranteeing diversity and inclusion, which eliminates any questions of propriety about a closed-door Electoral College meeting because it will be composed of people with opposing political views.

Based on the violence and fear that attempted to overturn the 2020 election in the nation’s capital on January 6, 2021, the failure of the 48 states and Washington D.C. to convert from winner-take-all to winner-of-congressional-district, could mean that by the time of the 2028 national election, American democracy will convert into American autocracy!!!