Things change. My record player gave way to an 8-track tape player circa 1971; my 8-tracks gave way to cassettes circa 1977. In the early 1990s, I switched to CDs and cursed the fact that my entire music library had to be replaced again. Now, thanks to the Internet, I don’t need a music player at all.

Phones change. A boxy oak crank phone hangs on my wall, an inheritance from Grandpa Smith who owned the local phone company, which means he strung perhaps 10 lines to farmhouses and charged each farmer a fee before AT&T swooped in. Today I use my iPhone in a hundred ways but, as a phone, mainly to order Chinese takeout.

“Well, that’s progress, dear.” (A quote from Disney’s Carousel of Progress.)

Which brings up the Electoral College even though it doesn’t seem to.

Forget right and wrong, Democrats and Republicans, recent presidential winners and losers. Forget that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote yet lost the election, a song sung by either party when their candidate loses in similar fashion.

The Electoral College is that wooden phone hanging on my wall, the 33-1/3 RPM records stored in my closet.

In 1776, a resident of Charleston who said “I have news from Washington” (which didn’t exist yet) generally meant “Some guy on a fast horse just rode into town.”

In a presidential election 200 years ago, they counted paper ballots by hand and sent someone to the state capital to report results. The state capital then sent someone to the nation’s capital (the Electoral College) to report results. They had no choice. The telegraph wouldn’t be invented until 1836.

In its day, the Electoral College was a pragmatic and necessary way to elect a president. The same can be said for the wooden crank phone if Farmer A wanted to talk to Farmer B without saddling up the buggy.

But the framers of the Constitution also added a way to amend the Constitution because they knew times would change. Well, times changed.

And one of the common defenses for an Electoral College – that it exists to keep an unqualified candidate out of office should the American people pick a maroon – is silly and wasn’t even a big reason in George Washington’s day. Besides, voters would never know what happened in the Electoral College in 1790 unless someone rode into town on a fast horse and told them. Today they’d get an instant notification.

For better or worse, The Electoral College is ceremonial now. So what’s the point?

But the Electoral College is here to stay.

Today, the Electoral College performs a very different function: It helps the two major political parties continue to be the only two major political parties, and politics trumps common sense, which shouldn’t shock anyone.

Imagine how presidential elections would operate in this non-Electoral-College scenario:

• Each presidential candidate would have to convince more than 50 percent of Americans that his/her vision for the future is best.
• Iowa residents would not be over-promised taxpayer-funded corn subsidies simply because they hold the nation’s first primary.
• Five swing states wouldn’t receive 95 percent of candidates’ visits.
• Irritating political commercials would be doled out more evenly.
• Republicans might actually care about Republican votes in California.
• Democrats might actually care about Democratic votes in Texas.

I live in the I-4 corridor in Orlando, Florida, and you couldn’t swing a dead Mickey without hitting a presidential candidate during the election. My friends in Texas and California can’t say the same.

Simply put, in 80 percent of the states, presidential votes are taken for granted. If you live in New York, why vote Republican? Your vote doesn’t count.

But minus the Electoral College, every vote would count. More people might go to the polls. Issues might get discussed. Money would have less influence because it’s spread thin. Political analysts would know even less than they know now.

The Electoral College is quaint. It makes sense in a 200-year-old way.

But it’s time to make every American democracy more democratic.

© 2017 SmithTakes.com