Requisite political column

A fact little known by the readership of the Indiana Daily Student is that the majority of opinion columns are turned in two days ahead of time so that editors and page designers can take their time and turn the real stress of deadline crunches to the breaking news of the front page. Consequently, the columns you read Wednesday were turned in Monday, and Thursday's were turned in Tuesday. My column was turned in Wednesday afternoon, making this the first IDS column that can respond to late-breaking news about the election. I feel compelled to use this opportunity to provide the deepest insights possible, using the information given to me to write substantive commentary about the future of our country. \nYeah, right. \nSome major media outlets such as www.foxnews.com, www.cspan.org and www.npr.org headline with "Kerry Concedes Race," while www.cnn.com and www.msnbc.com say "Bush Wins." Half the media say Bush won Ohio for 274 votes, the other half still won't call Ohio, but will cover Kerry's concession speech. Of course all this is of no use to you whatsoever, because you already know the outcome. I'm sitting here two days in your past and things look like Bush wins, given that he claimed victory 40 minutes ago, but I'm not going to declare anything. We saw last election what the Fates do to those who try to call things too soon. \nSo, what exactly is this about? If I'm not going to talk about who won, what purpose could this serve?\nTo show how ridiculous the whole process is. \nI'm not saying democracy is bad. I am saying that the Electoral College bites. It's obvious that Bush has won the popular election, yet there is still a chance Kerry will win the Electoral College, simply because only specific votes actually matter in this game. The United States is one of the only democracies on the face of the planet that still uses an indirect voting system for its chief executive, and we just had the very real possibility of swearing in a president who was not wanted by more than half the voters for two elections in a row! Iraq is looking over at us, saying, "You invaded us so we could have this? Gee, thanks." \nThe Electoral College was originally designed to protect the power of the individual states and assure that only intelligent people were doing the actual voting. Now that federalism has completely won out over state identities -- and by "now" I mean several generations ago -- a U.S. citizen no longer considers himself/herself primarily a Hoosier or Buckeye, but an American. The issue of state sovereignty has passed away. As for intelligence, the quality of education in America has increased a hundredfold since 1788. Besides, do you really want to withhold your right to vote directly for the president because someone says you're too stupid? \nBut wait -- it gets better! Only two states can split their electoral votes, so the rest give all their votes to whoever held the majority. This means that the difference between 51 percent and 100 percent in a single state is none. If 24 states individually vote 100 percent for candidate A, but the other 26 each split 51/49 for candidate B, then over three quarters of the population could want candidate A, but B gets elected. Obviously the distribution of the states affects this, as the number of votes per state varies. But the potential remains, and we saw this played out last time. \nThe Electoral College is a holdback from a time that no longer applies today. All the wheelings and dealings to obtain electoral votes are taking the aim off of the purpose of democracy: Doing what the people want. Maybe after two absurdly close elections where the problems with the system were brought to bear, Congress will begin to really talk about removing this outlandish system. Of course, maybe they already did. I wrote this two days ago.