Electoral fix needed
Regarding “Exceptionalism” letter (Page A17, Saturday), when our Founding Fathers met for the Constitutional Convention, their political association had existed in any form for only a few decades. Furthermore, technology was so limited that a letter would take weeks to go from, say, Massachusetts to Georgia. Also, significant cultural differences between those states were so radical as to make any form of political union extremely difficult to attain. The electoral college system therefore was basically an attempt to accommodate the technological limitations of those times, while placating southern slave states enough to encourage their support for ratifying the Constitution.
The disputed elections of 1824 and 1876 should have been dire warnings of the flaws built into that system. Certainly, the technological constraints of the 18th century now no longer exist, and, consequently, there is far more commonality of values. Americans have always been proud to proclaim the virtues of “one-person one-vote.” It is therefore illogical for an individual vote in Wyoming to have more political clout than a vote in Florida; we are all supposed to be equally American. The electoral college therefore is a dangerous anachronism, especially in an age when it is possible to use media and hacking to target key districts in key states. potentially distorting election results to a degree all out of proportion to actual numbers and margins.
Amendments have been used to adjust and modify our system of selfgovernment. U.S. senators are no longer appointed by their state legislatures. Blacks are no longer enslaved, and they and women now are able to vote. Our Founding Fathers may not have been able to foresee all the evolutionary changes America would undergo. However, their ratifying of the amendment process was an acknowledgment that changes would be coming and procedural adjustments would be needed.
After the elections of 2000 and 2016, the continuing existence of the electoral college is now an urgent case in point.
Brian L. Hope, College Station