Or was the idea flawed from the start?
Much has been written since Election Day about the need to resist the “normalization” of racism and misogyny. Less has been said about the “normalization” of democratic dysfunction, the signs of which are all around us.
Take the popular vote. Sorry, Americans, it’s just not “normal” for the candidate who came in second to be declared the winner of the race for the second time in the space of a mere 16 years. In 2000, George W. Bush was elected the 43rd president of the United States despite winning about 540,000 fewer votes than his Democratic opponent; in 2016, Donald Trump has been elected 45th president despite trailing Hillary Clinton by 2 million votes.
The short answer to both of those questions is "Yes." And as much as some of you might get angry at me for saying so, the idea we could appeal to individual Electors to change their votes and "fix" the Trump mistake is just more evidence the system is broken. You'd be giving them more power, not less, and also your tacit approval of a ruling class "deciding" what voters really wanted or needed. I've received several e-mails from friends wanting me to sign petitions asking Electors to do that, and I've refused (quietly) to throw my name in. Why? Because there's no middle of the road. We either do away with the Electoral College via the laborious (but Constitutional) method, or we allow it to operate the way it was designed. As we've learned from the behavior of the NC GOP, winning isn't everything, and the ends don't always justify the means:
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