Matriculating At The Electoral College

Most US citizens nowadays have not read the Constitution of the united States of America [sic], much less the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers.  For this reason, the Electoral College seems like an elitist and anachronistic vestige of a by-gone era.  Actually, the problem is that the System has been so monkeyed with, and the federal institutions completely re-tasked, since the founding of the country that the original intent of many of the country's institutions seem rather mysterious.

Thank you, American "education" system for dropping Civics classes in favor of LGBT studies.

In fact, if anyone bothered to read the US Constitution, the Senate, President and Vice President were never intended to be elected by the masses.  Only the House of Representatives was considered the People's forum, while the Senate was intended to be a deliberative body, the President's job was just to execute the laws passed by Congress, and the Supreme Court was an "untouchable" group of FIVE people who weighed laws against the Constitutional powers.

Since the original intent of the Federal government has been completely turned upside down, many of the national institutions seem bizarre by current standards, not the least of which is the Electoral College.

The Federal government was never intended to issue laws that affected the People of the States.  It was simply a body created to regulate relations between the States, issue and regulate a single currency, and unify trade regulations and foreign policy.  For this reason, most of the Federal government was NOT elected by the People, but rather by the States, which were the only entities affected by Federal law.

Originally, Senators were elected, not by general statewide elections, but by the Legislatures in each State.  The Legislatures were also tasked with selecting the Electors for each State, who in turn voted for the President.  The top vote in the Electoral College became the President, and second place became the Vice President.

Each State had a minimum of three Electors, one for each Senator (total two), and one for each Congressional seat.  The total number was based on population, determined by a decadal Census, which was only intended to count heads, not race, gender or number of toilets and flooring material in each house.

Over time, the Federal government began to insinuate more and more power over individual citizens, a function it was never intended to have.  After the Civil War, this usurpation of power was more or less cemented in place.

Let's take a minute to examine how the Electoral College was supposed to function.  The 12th Amendment, ratified in 1804, states that the Electors meet on the first Monday following the second Wednesday of December every four years.  The Electors vote separately for President and Vice President, with at least one of them being from a different State.  The Electors send a Certificate of their vote to the US Senate, where the current Vice President (President of the Senate) opens them in front of the full House and Senate and reads them aloud.  If no one gets a 2/3rds majority, then the House immediately votes for President, with a simple majority winning.  If a majority is not reached by the following March, then the current Vice President assumes the office.

No where in the Constitution does it mandate that the President and Vice President be elected by the citizenry.  That is actually a function of the party system, where popular vote selects the nominees.  Therefore, the popular vote for President is meaningless, except as allowed by law in the individual States, where all of them have locked the percentage of pledged Electors to the popular vote in some form or another.  In other words, the American public has never elected a President, either now or in the past.  They simply bind Electors to vote one way or another, with varying degrees of force (or none at all).

Basically, all the time and money spent on presidential elections in the US is really pointless.

The power (thought the Right is a contentious argument) of the Federal government to bypass the States and invade the lives of private citizens came with the creation of the Federal Reserve (Federal Reserve Act of 1913) and the Income Tax (16th Amendment).  Together, these laws removed the "power of the purse" from the people and tore down the barrier between them and the Federal government.

The next jiggering with the US System came right after the Income Tax amendment in 1913 (appropriately enough), when the 17th Amendment took the power to elect Senators away from the Legislatures and gave it to the rabble.  This further eroded the function of the Federal government as just a regulatory body among the States, and gave it more power over the individual citizens.

The Judiciary Act of 1869, combined with President Franklin Roosevelt's court stacking to ram his New Deal through Constitutional prohibitions were the final nail in the coffin of the Republic.  At this point, the Socialist agenda of the FDR administration solidified the democratic wave that had slowly overpowered the founding intent of the Federal government.  It now had the power to directly affect the lives of individual citizens, which was precisely the worry that the Founders had when they set up the system.

As it stands, the Electoral College seems like an anachronistic vestige of a bygone era because its intent has been destroyed over the past two centuries through the usurpation of States' Rights and the unbridled expansion of Federal powers.  The last remaining barriers against an all-powerful Federal beast are the 9th and 10th Amendments (Rights of the People, and the States), and the jury system, all of which have been under steady attack for decades now, in great part by the purposeful maleducation (to coin a term) instituted by the Federal government trying to centralize control over information through the school systems, in other words, the Common Core.

Since the American people no longer have any clue why and how their government works, it is becoming increasingly easy to run roughshod over the law without even bothering to change it.  Who would argue when no one understands it?  And besides, decades of maleducation have left people thinking that Democracy is pretty nifty, not realizing that these strange institutions were put in place to provide a barrier against centralize power and control over people's daily lives, which is where the US is today.

One of my biggest worries about the recent election is that neither Trump, or the people, have any clue that they have demanded from the office of the President actions and results that the office is not empowered to have.

I would be greatly encouraged if Trump's only act in office were to appoint strict constructionist justices to the Supreme Court and together begin dismantling the central power grab of the Federales.  This one act would eliminate 99% of all the problems that got people to the point of electing Trump in the first place.  The rest of his job would be dismantling the Federal Reserve and the Income Tax system and returning the country to the original form of government it was meant to have.

Unimaginable?  Yup  That's why I have never supported ANY candidate for President.