Electoral College - AKA...Huh?

The Electoral College of the United States of America is an enemy to common sense sharing company with other enemies such as Daylight Saving Time.

Here is the summary given for the Electoral College from Wikipedia.

"Presidential electors are selected on a state-by-state basis, as determined by the laws of each state. Each state currently uses its statewide popular vote on election day to appoint electors. Although ballots list the names of the presidential candidates, voters within the 50 states and Washington, D.C. actually choose electors for their state when they vote for President and Vice President. These presidential electors in turn cast electoral votes for those two offices. Even though the aggregate national popular vote is calculated by state officials and media organizations, the national popular vote is not the basis for electing a President or Vice President."

This is the point where you read this 50 times, waste 30 minutes, and still don't understand why in the world an election would be administered this way...

Wait, wait...it gets better!

"Except in the few closely fought swing states, it does not matter how many people turn out to vote. The Electoral College eliminates any advantage to a political party or campaign for encouraging voters to turn out, except in those swing states. If the presidential election were decided by a national popular vote, in contrast, campaigns and parties would have a strong incentive to work to increase turnout everywhere. Individuals would similarly have a strong incentive to persuade their friends and neighbors to turn out to vote. The differences in turnout between swing states and non-swing states under the current electoral college system suggest that replacing the Electoral College with direct election by popular vote would likely increase turnout and participation significantly."

What? Encourage participation nationwide instead of only doing so in swing states? That makes absolutely no sense at all...right? Who wants everyone to feel that their vote actually could make a difference in a presidential election? Apparently not the United States of America.

To be clear, I personally have never voted to determine who the President of The United States of America would be. What I have done is vote for an Elector who then votes to decide who the President will be for me; good thing I register and vote. Since I do not live in a swing state it really makes no difference if I vote or not since a presidential election will virtually never be decided by the Electors that I go out and vote for on election day! You have to love that and admit that it makes total sense.

Even in the rare event that my state's (AZ) Electors would decide a presidential election, the Elector(s) that I vote for to then vote in a presidential election in my behalf could potentially be a Faithless Elector(s), meaning that Elector would not represent my will anyway. If that is the case (it hardly ever is...but it is possible) then my meaningless vote in Arizona would be utterly meaningless or categorized by some other adjective that is synonymous with meaningless.

So, cheers to the Electoral College that we use to determine who the President of The United States of America is, but you can only raise your glass if you live in Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, or North Carolina (recent swing states).

If you want to join my common sense party we can propose that we all go get in line, cast our votes, have them counted, and then see who gets the most votes and call them the winner.