America a Democracy? Now there’s a thought …

The New York Times ways in on the topic of the Electoral College: Drop Out of the College

Well it’s about time the whole Electoral College thing was consigned to the trash heap. It’s undemocratic. No debate is needed beyond that. The U.S. elects its Presidents in a wholly undemocratic and antiquated way. It is very quaint to hear Americans come up with convoluted and anti-democratic defenses of what is an historical fudge. The people who came up with the College had already voted against the idea a few times, but under the threat of failure to draw up a new constitution because of the obstinacy of the slave states they caved in and saddled us with this bizarre anachronism. Enough. Get rid of it before it does more damage to the country. There is no argument worthy of a second’s thought to justify its continued existence. It is a vestige of the country’s slave owning roots; it distorts modern political campaigning toward ‘battleground states’; it gives disproportionate power to small states and thus twists priorities toward issues that resonate in those states; and, most of all, it produces presidential winners who do not have majority voter support. It has to go.