The local rag entitles its letters to the editor section "Readers write." Here is a recent specimen:
The May 20 letter writer who insists that "we are not all complicit" in President Trump's election and that to say we are is to "disrespect the majority who did not vote for him" seems himself to disrespect the wisdom of the founders, who designed the Electoral College precisely to avoid the possibility that we all be governed by such population centers as California and New York, both left-wing bastions and neither of which appears to be terribly well-governed itself . . . .
And the author drones on, apparently pleased with each new bit of nonsense that occurs to him. He thought of it, therefore it must be profound, so yes, the founders foresaw in the 1780s that this new nation would expand westward to the Pacific Ocean, where millions of stupid people would settle in places like Silicon Valley and destroy the United States from within unless their benighted votes for president be diluted by the Electoral College. The foresight!
Maybe looking forward more than 200 years to the electoral landscape of the early 21st-century contributed to the founders' moral failure on slavery, an issue that was directly before them. From Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution they ratified:
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.
This is the notorious three-fifths compromise, which allowed for counting slaves ("other Persons"), who had no political rights whatever, as partial citizens for purposes of determining representation in the Congress. The compromise would have been less notorious if it hadn't been augmented by, for example, the provision allotting to each state two senators, without regard to population. So the influence of small states, by and large the slave-holding ones, was undemocratically enhanced in the House by the three-fifths compromise, in the Senate by the provision allotting two senators to every state, and, in presidential elections, by the Electoral College, which, instead of just counting the votes of citizens, first divides them up by state and awards "electors" based on the state's representation in the Congress--said representation having already been tampered with so as to achieve a certain outcome that would now be duplicated in the selection of the chief executive.
Talk about a rigged system! It's just about perfect that supporters of Donald Trump should put it forward as proof of the genius of the founders.
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