The Electoral College and the Plantation South.

New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth,They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.

-James Russell Lowell-

When a presidential candidate wins an election despite his opponent having 2 million more votes, it's time to stop pretending the electoral college is there to level some sort of playing field; as a necessary protection of the unique interests of Idaho or Montana against the populous states.   The institution exists because Founding Fathers from slave states knew they wouldn't have a chance of winning an election in a direct vote without diluting the power of more populous, more educated and wealthier free states.

The Electoral College was a means to allow slave states to inflate their voting population by including slaves ( at 3/5 of the value of a white man)  in the total population without letting them vote.

Of course the objective of keeping the African American voters from casting ballots, while their numbers are still used to justify electoral votes, persists at some level. Does this process also increase the political power of  racists and Nativists?  I'll leave that argument for people with more patience than I have at the moment, but this is the second time in recent memory that the voters' chosen candidate lost to a system designed to boost the power of slave states and perpetuate slavery. 2 million votes cast in vain? This should not be ignored any longer.

Is it time to set aside the anachronistic concept of the USA as a loose confederation of independent states, particularly when it comes to selecting a president?  Again, I have no patience after so many years of  listening to self styled "conservatives" howling like demented and self-contradictory demons. I'll leave it to others, but arguments for the legitimacy of the Civil War are more common than front teeth in some parts of the South and defending a system that persists even after the confederacy died and slavery with it, is still stinking up the place. The South still fears the domination of the North, even though the Mason Dixon line no longer divides us and the battle between slavers and abolitionists has mutated its appearance. We have other names, like "Coastal Liberal" for those who oppose such antique attitudes about race. The Electoral College is a relic of bad old days and should be relegated to oblivion.

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, 

In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side; 

Some great cause, God’s new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight, 

Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right, 

And the choice goes by forever ‘twixt that darkness and that light.