Rigged from the Beginning
Yangon, Myanmar, June 2nd, 2016
Salaroche


As Donald the Fraudster, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has shouted several times at his political rallies, the American electoral system is rigged. And boy is he right on this one. And this is particularly true of the Democratic Party’s primary process, although the Republican one isn't off the hook either.

Is there anything more blatantly insulting in the face of the concept of democracy than the practice of anointing unelected “Superdelegates” to represent the people at the Party convention? What can be more shamelessly rigged than the tradition of granting elector privileges to people entitled to select presidential candidates according to their own personal preferences and even in complete disregard to the results obtained in their own state’s primaries or caucuses?

Doesn’t that amount to stacking the deck against the will of the people?

The funny thing about such rigged electoral system as the American Electoral College is that it does today exactly what it was created to do over two hundred years ago: to curb the voice of the people whenever the elites so desired.

The founding fathers didn’t want to grant Congress the power to elect Presidents because of the divisions usually prevailing in its midst, but they didn’t want to fully grant it to the people either, as they feared that their oligarchic privileges could eventually be dismantled by the voting mob. So they came up with the idea of investing some prominent individuals who were supposed to be naturally endowed with “common sense”, with the power to redirect election results in their favor.

And so it was that sometime circa 1787 the Electoral College was created.

In the present election cycle, by sheer numbers, the so-called “Superdelegates” can exert their arbitrary undemocratic power over the results of Democratic Paty primaries and caucuses more than their counterparts in the Republican Party can exert over theirs. In this year 2016 there are approximately 720 Democratic Superdelegates and some 168 Republican.

This means that 17% of the total 4,051delegates present at the Democratic Party convention this coming July will be casting their votes at will regardless of the results in their home states. And from the outset we all know who a good majority of them intend to vote for.

On the Republican side, and contrary to the general perception, the situation is slightly more democratic, as Superdelegates comprise only 7% out of a total of 2,472 possible delegates. More curiously so, this time around Republican Superdelegates will not be allowed to vote for whomever they wish as they will be forced to vote in line with the primary results in their home states.

But why should Americans worry about this now when they haven't worried about it before? The truth is American democracy was never meant to be fully democratic. The founding fathers were mostly members of the oligarchy of the time, so why should they have created a direct-vote kind of  electoral system that might eventually have worked against them? The Electoral College was meant to do what it has been doing in the Democratic Primaries this year and has so far failed to do in the Republican ones: To select a presidential nominee that pleases the party elites.

As of this date, Hillary Clinton would anyway be ahead of Bernie Sanders in the popular vote count, regardless of her being the choice of the anointed Superdelegates, but the psychological effect of her having such considerable lead over Sanders in the delegate count has resulted in discouraging some undecided primary voters to vote for him.

Any which way you look at it, and in spite of whatever any apologists might say, the American Electoral System is rigged in favor of the political elites and quite often in a decisive manner. Most Americans know this, but only a few among them would be willing to do anything about it. Just don’t ask a good majority of Americans whether they would like to switch to a direct-vote kind of electoral system for they will most surely tell you that, among other things, they wouldn’t want to appear to be following any European electoral model.

The Electoral College, many Americans say, is one of those unique traits that make America the exceptional country that it is. To get rid of it would mean joining the rest of those lesser states that populate the world and that would be utterly unacceptable. And this they say even as the Electoral College has proven time and again to be undemocratic.

Just picture that thus far in the history of the country four candidates have been sent to the White House by the Electoral College in blatant contravention of the popular vote. With that in mind, can you imagine the possibility that Congress could ever be willing to debate replacing such rigged system in any serious rational way? Not in a hundred years.

The American electoral system was rigged from the beginning, continues to be rigged today and, the way things are going, will remain equally rigged for the foreseeable future. Too bad, although, as they say, in the long run people always get the system of government they deserve.

But, cheer up America. Things may not be looking as bright as most of you would like, but at least you’re not living under the boot of any fascist regime… at least not for the time being.

Salaroche