Be Skeptical of this Campaign Against "Fake News"

Spotting "fake news" used to be easy. It tended to reside in the tabloid section near supermarket checkouts, and it tended to include stories of aliens endorsing presidential candidates. Then along came the Internet and suddenly information became easier to access. But people also became intellectually lazy. Purveyors of prevarications found a much larger audience, reachable within seconds. And many people who buy it, without doing a minimum amount of research to debunk the story. 

For a while, "fake news" was simply a way to identify which of your friends and family members were gullible. You could chuckle, as you thought, "I can't believe my friend actually fell for this." If you had a strong reaction to a friend's posts, or thought you were being helpful, you could post a comment with links to websites that debunked the so-called news account. 

But now, there are allegations that the proliferation of "fake news" may have tipped the balance in the 2016 presidential election. In response, social media platforms, such as Facebook, are looking into ways to restrict "fake news" from popping up in people's newsfeeds. The problem, however, is who is going to police those who are policing the so-called "fake news." That is, how do you prevent the campaign against "fake news" from becoming a with hunt of censorship?

Whether you want to admit it or not, media bias exists not only in the mainstream press, but also in the board rooms of those who operate social media such as Facebook. You can see it during presidential debates, when self-appointed fact-checkers attempt to portray one candidate as more truthful than another. What we are willing to accept as "facts" in many ways depends on our preconceived view of the world. And what we label as "fake" will also depend on preconceived biases. Not surprisingly, what the fact-checkers called a lie often depended on the fact-checker's own leanings. 

At the moment, the anti "fake news" campaign is focused on those websites that do make up stories whole cloth hoping the gullible post links and thus increase the site's ad revenues. Does anyone remember the so-called story of the FBI agent supposedly investigating the Hillary Clinton email scandal who allegedly committed a fiery murder-suicide a week after James Comey announced the re-opening of the case?  Those who held fast to the belief that the Clintons have a way of making opponents disappear bought the story hook, line and sinker, and tweeted or posted it for wide distribution. We now know that the event never occurred. Instead, cheeky Internet trolls put up a website that looked like a news site, and hoped to rake in ad profit by inflaming the passions of Hillary haters. 

But the problem is that some of the advice on how to tell if news is fake isn't very reliable. One piece of advice is to check to see if the news source is a reputable outlet. However, in the past twenty years or so, journalistic standards have declined to such a degree that even so-called reputable sources have published stories of dubious merit. Fact-checking is dead. Carefully selection of which facts and stories are worthy of publication weed out what information gets served to the public. So-called "government leaks" and "unnamed sources" allow the major news outlets to publish innuendo, rumor and outright spin. All the while, other major news outlets will simply cite to each other, as if the proliferation of stories covering nothing more than rumor elevates them to fact. 

Take for example the early reporting of Donald Trump's transition to the White House. Reporters were eager to cite unnamed sources to claim that Trump was unaware of the scope of the presidency, that his team was in disarray, and that the president-elect wanted security clearance for his children. Yet a closer look at the evidence cited showed that all of this was merely based on exaggerations of questions the president-elect and his team posed in private when meeting with White House staff. Yet, despite flimsy sources, major news talking heads cited each others' stories to elevate rumor and conjecture into fact. 

Yet very little has been reported on why Hillary Clinton failed to address her supporters on election night despite conceding the rave to Trump. A few days later the same type of "unnamed sources" claimed she was in a drunken rage, lashing out physically against top campaign aids. Yet, major news sources have ignored this story, despite the fact that it was based on the same type of evidence (rumor and conjecture) as the allegations of Trump's alleged incompetence. Which is to be considers "fake news"?  

While there are many stories that are verifiably fake, in many other instances what one person considers fake depends very much on that person's world view. Having a social media platform appoint itself as a "fake news" blood hound is a frightening concept as it smacks of unchecked censorship. Used wrongly, the campaign against "fake news" can deteriorate into just another method of subtly attempting to manipulate thought by selective interpreting what is a "fact" that can be fed to the masses. 

By: William J. Kovatch, Jr. 

When Is "Borrowing" a Tweet Wrong? Asking for a Friend

I have a friend who got caught "stealing" another person's tweet. It was funny tweet. Within hours it got thousands of retweets and likes. He was rather proud of that fact, and announced it on his Facebook page.  In fact, more than a week later, he is still getting people tagging him on Facebook celebrating the tens of thousands of likes and retweets.

 

The thing is, the next day, the originator of the tweet got very annoyed. So much so, that she somehow got a national periodical to publish an online article on my friend and his habit of "stealing" other peoples tweets. Her Twitter followers were incensed. They were using words like plagiarism. One went so far as to start an online shaming campaign, and even published a link to my friend's law firm's contact page.

Now my goal here is to shame anyone. I'm not mentioning any names. But I do have serious question. What is the online etiquette? Where is the line?

Look, we have all "stolen," or if you like him more innocuous word "borrowed," online content. I have seen photos and memes that I thought were funny, downloaded them, and posted them on my online accounts. This is how memes links to videos and funny pictures "go viral." In fact going viral, which seems to be the modern day equivalent of Andy Warhol's 15 minutes of fame, is a coveted occurrence. Quite frankly, when I "borrow content" I figure all of my friends know I'm just not clever enough to come up with my own Joe Biden memes.

Plus there's that whole tradition of hearing a joke or funny line, finding it amusing, and repeating it to others. My grandfather did it all the time. Surely those of you who follow my Facebook account did not think that my comment that Mike Trout's winning of the MVP seemed fishy was original, did you? (Thank you Joe Corrado for your online joke. My repeating it was meant as a tribute to your wit, please don't sue me.)

And Twitter is a fairly unique platform. You're limited to 140 characters. It forces you to either be terse, witty or sarcastic. It takes a lot of thought to come up with something funny to write in just 140 characters. (It's a perfect platform for Haikus, by the way.) Some people who come up with the pithy jokes are understandably possessive of their intellectual property.

In this case my friend uses his Twitter account to brand his law firm. The person he borrowed the tweet from was also a lawyer. She also uses her Twitter account to brand her law firm. It is understandable that she could get annoyed that her work was picked up and used by somebody else, who is now getting the credit for being funny.  It'slike a stand-up comic stealing another comic's lines.

Sure, Twitter has a retweet button and a retweet with quote option.  You could do that if you wanted to be courteous and give credit to the originator. But people steal funny tweets all the time.

So where is the line? And when does the simple repeating of somebody else's joke turn into full-blown plagiarism?

By: William J. Kovatch, Jr. 

The Left Has No One to Blame But Themselves

Here we are just over a week after the U.S. presidential elections, and the meltdown among the political left, who are in full denial and finger-pointing mode, continues.  Instead of a truly needed introspection on this loss, the vocal on the left need to weed out which groups are responsible for this by failing to adhere strictly to the monolithic view of how they should have voted. I find it amazing that the most insightful analysis and criticism has come not from Democratic party leaders who need to learn how to adjust to this defeat, but from a fictional character created by a British comedian.

Jonathan Pie is a fictional reporter created by British comedian Tom Walker.  He has apparently been making these videos where the reporter supposedly flies off the cuff and goes into a explicative-laden tirade over the day's news.  Over the weekend, links to a video which supposedly catches Pie preparing for a day's broadcast, angrily laying it out to the left the reasons why they have lost a string of elections internationally, found their way into the newsfeed of many Facebook users.  The thing is, through the guise of a fictional character, Walker's criticism hits the mark.

Pie exclaims, "Our argument isn't won by hurling labels and insults."  On this, he is exactly right.  What has crept into leftist thinking is this smug arrogance that if you don't think like they do, you must not be intelligent enough to talk politics, let alone have a say in policy-making.

The hallmark of this arrogance can be seen all the way back in the 2000 presidential election when, during one of the debates, Al Gore got into George Bush's face to ask his about the Dingle-Norwood bill.  This arrogance was repeated in the 2016 election as the left had a collective fit when third party candidate Gary Johnson candidly admitted that he did not know what Aleppo was.  The idea being that we, the liberals of this country, spend countless hours pouring over our newspapers, periodicals, and Congressional Records to become much more informed than you.  How dare you think that you and your inability to recognize policy minutia have any business even being in the discussion.

And so, instead of educating, liberals assume that those who don't agree with them are less intelligent, and as such are only deserving of ridicule and insults.  Not satisfied with resorting to base insults, such as racist, bigot or sexist, the left engage in the mental masturbation of devising new ways of hurling insults by creating obscure terms or equating otherwise innocuous policy positions with ignorance.  Thus with arrogant smirks indicating knowledge of some inside joke, the left throw terms out like "alt-right," which are meaningless to the majority of Americans, but have derisive connotations within elitist liberal circles.

Having been accused of being "alt-right" for daring to openly criticize Hillary Clinton, I did research on the term.  I found that there is no clear definition of it, or where its boundaries lie.  It is merely the latest of epithets liberals have created to look down on dissention.

Of course, the derision doesn't stop with mere insults.  Stances on fiscal policy define whether or not a person is truly bigoted.  Thus, Democratic Representative Charles Rangel boldly proclaimed when the Republicans first broke the Democratic strangle-hold on Congress in 1994 that the new racists wear suits and call for tax cuts.

Going back to the video, after laying into the reasons why Clinton and the left lost, Pie confides that he dare not say these things to his leftist friends because he would get "f-ing lynched if he said this."  Pie laments that the left doesn't debate anymore because the left has decided that any other way of thinking is just unacceptable.  "So, if you're on the right, you're a freak, you're evil, you're racist, you're stupid.  You are a basket of deplorables." Exasperated, Pie exclaims, "How do you think people are going to vote if you talk to them like that?"

And surely, there were people who took pride in being the target of such criticism.  I had white female cousins proudly proclaiming themselves to be one of the "deplorables."  Back when Hillary participated in the character assassination of Monica Lewinsky to cover up her husband's disgusting behavior, she labeled his enemies as a "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy."  Back then, I had business cards printed up proudly proclaiming myself to be part of that "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy."

"When has anyone ever been persuaded by being insulted or labeled?"  Pie continues.  Afraid of being attacked for raising their opinion, Pie postulates, people wait until they are in the privacy of the voting to express themselves honestly.

And there is truth to this as well.  While the left may dominate public discourse with their control of most major media outlets, that discourse is not a true representation of how Americans believe.  As an example, when I first came to Washington, I was one of few in my Government office who had fiscally conservative views. And yet, I had to endure office-wide emails deriding the conservative agenda.  I could, and did, respond at first.  But finding myself shouted down and only contributing to the discomfort others felt in having an unwanted political argument in their virtual in-boxes, I decided that it was better to ignore the office-wide email chains and avoid political discussions with my friends and co-workers.  Sure, conservatives found each other.  But it was usually through whispers and innuendo until in a surreptitious meeting we would confide our beliefs to each other as if we were the French underground during the Nazi occupation.

The left love to extol the virtue of diversity for its own sake, unless of course that diversity includes a tolerance of a difference of opinions.  And thus charges of narrow-mindedness, ignorance and bigotry are emerging from this defeat.  If you are a white woman, who dare you vote against your gender.  If you dared to vote third party, well you may claim not to be a racist, but you showed your tolerance for racism by not voting for our champion, Hillary.

And it is this monolithic intolerance of different view points that had blinded the left from recognizing the serious flaws in their own candidate.  It is as if the liberals in this country were so motivated to elect the first woman president that they forgot to consider whether this particular woman really deserved their support.

She's a woman who cares about all the people!  Really?  Because a look into her private conversations among her campaign staff showed her aloofness and tendency to look down upon those groups in society that don't offer unflinching support.

She has the right temperament!  Really?  Because we have all seen her break down into angry fits when challenged on her responsibilities and choices.

America is just too willing to reject an experienced and qualified woman in favor of an inexperienced and unqualified white man!  Really?  Because let's take a look at her so-called experience.  During her husband's administration she tried to forge a role for the unelected first lady in policy decisions, heading a secretive body to formulate a health care proposal.  It was a body kept secret specifically to avoid dissent and diversity of opinions.  And for that reason Hillary Care failed miserably.

After her husband's administration, she hand-picked an open Senate seat in a state where she had no connections, and which showed in the past to be friendly to carpet-baggers with popular political relatives who had presidential ambitions.  Her years in the Senate were meant to begin the creation of the myth of her experience by projecting a certain image.  To her surprise, this image was not enough as she found herself out-maneuvered by yet another inexperienced but charismatic Senator from her own party when she first sought the nomination.  Then, in a back room compromise, she was promised the all important Secretary of State position for her support of Barrack Obama in the general election.

And how was her tenure as Secretary of State?  Lost in this post-election shuffle is the sad fact that President Obama's foreign policy has been disastrous.  The key example of this was the naïve manner in which the Administration, which included Secretary of State Clinton, handled the so-called "Arab Spring."  Assuming that young people who rise up against a dictator must be fighting for greater democracy, the Administration ignored the power of fundamentalist Islam.  Indeed, our Ambassador and Embassy staff were not brutally murdered because of any security issues or any amateurish YouTube video.  They were murdered because the naivety of the Administration ignored the history of the spread of fundamentalist Islam and the power it holds over its followers.  (Indeed, to underline the point I made earlier on the hurling of insults, if any liberal Democrats were brave enough to reach this point in this essay, I fully expect that instead of resorting to history to refute me, at this point I risk being labeled an Islamophobe in making this argument.)

This election was not the triumph of hatred, ignorance and bigotry, as the left would have you believe.  As I mentioned in an earlier essay, it cannot even be seen as an ideological triumph for the Republican party.  But it was the result of a very negative campaign with two very flawed candidates.  The shame of it was that one of them had to win.  At any rate, at this point, instead of resorting to name-calling, and finger pointing, the left does need to engage in real self-examination.  And that self-examination should result in a realization that insults and derision are not the ways to win the hearts and souls of the electorate.

By:  William J. Kovatch, Jr.

Electoral College Victory, Popular Vote Loss: The New Norm in U.S. Presidential Elections?

When I was a boy learning about civics back in the 1980s, the idea that a person could win the Electoral College, but lose the popular vote was a novelty.  Sure it had happened three times already in U.S. history.  But the last time was in 1888, when Benjamin Harris beat Grover Cleveland.  As old as some of my teachers were, none of them had lived through that election.

Indeed, the latest examples for us were the Electoral College landslides of 1980 and 1984. We had teachers who liked to point out that a shift of just a few thousand votes in West Virginia in 1960 would have given Richard Nixon the Electoral College victory despite losing the popular vote.  But the fact was, it hadn't happened in almost 100 years.

But now it has happened twice in a sixteen year period.  Both elections involved a popular vote that was so close between the two major candidates that less than one percent separated them.  Both elections involved neither party receiving a majority of popular votes due to third party candidates.  In both instances, the Republican candidate emerged victorious in the Electoral College.

What was once a novelty of our system I believe has become a more likely outcome in future presidential elections.  It all has to do with demographics, and how the Electors are distributed.

Representation in the Electoral College rides off of a state's representation in Congress.  Each state gets the same number of Electors as it has Representatives in the House and Senators.  The District of Columbia gets at least the same number of Electors as the least populous state, which right now is three.

We all know that each state gets two Senators regardless of population.  That gives states with smaller populations the advantage.  In a state like California, there are approximately 680,000 people per Elector.  But in a state such as Montana, there are about 330,000 people per Elector.  Thus, if you live in a state with a smaller population, your vote in the presidential election has a greater weight.

When you compare the election results since the 1990s, what you see is that Democratic voters tend to congregate in states with a large population along the coasts.  Indeed, the Democratic candidates won by huge margins in New York and California.  Smaller western states, such as Montana, Idaho Utah, North Dakota and South Dakota tend to vote Republican.  That means that proportionally speaking, because of where voters live, Republican voters tend to count more in presidential elections. 

We all know, then, that presidential elections come down to the battleground states.  These are the states where the populations tend to be split more evenly among Democratic and Republican voters.  In those years where the elections are close, but the trend in these battleground states is to break with the Republican candidate, it will be more likely that the Republican will win enough states to secure an Electoral College victory, but when the tally of nation-wide popular votes is reported, win less than the Democratic counterpart.  Unless Democrats move out of cities like New York City and Los Angeles and into more rural areas, this trend is likely to continue.

Whether you believe this system should be changed is largely determined by whether your candidate wins.  The loudest calls for change in the Electoral College have not surprisingly come from Democratic voters.  But I recall a discussion during the 2000 campaign, that imagined the alternative possibility.  Namely, it was postulated that George W. Bush could win the popular vote but lose to Al Gore in the Electoral College.  It was further postulated that the Bush Campaign was ready to litigatie if that occurred.  Of course, we know that the opposite was true, that Al Gore narrowly lost the Electoral College and commenced litigation in Florida over the manner by which paper ballots were counted.  It was a contentious legal battle that very quickly found its way to the Supreme Court, and had this country uncertain for some time over who won the election.

In the end, the Electoral College is a method enshrined in the Constitution.  It can be changed, but only by a constitutional amendment.  Given that all of the methods of amending the Constitution require a super majority and that our electorate appears to be evenly split, it seems likely that the Electoral College is here to stay for quite some time.

By:  William J. Kovatch, Jr.

Be Careful Not to Interpret Too Much Into the 2016 Elections

Let the misinterpretation of election results begin!

Many of my hard core Republican friends have been ecstatic this past week.  There are feelings of vindication, and outright joy in having beaten back the dragon that was Hillary Clinton.

I chose to vote Libertarian this time around, but I have to admit a certain relief that there will not be another Clinton in the White House.  Of course, that relief is tempered with the realization that we will have Donald Trump.

If you have been listening to talk radio this week, you cannot miss the elation in the voices of the likes of Rush Limbaugh.  What is more, Limbaugh is outright proclaiming this election to be a complete repudiation of President Obama's policies and the Democrats' liberal ideology.  He is outright warning Trump not to accommodate liberals in his administration.

Surely the more extreme wing of the Republican Party, the Tea Partiers, will see it that way too.  A victory like this, where Republicans not only won the White House, but retained the House of Representatives and the Senate, will only encourage their "no compromises" attitude.  Although there is no credible threat, you can almost hear the Tea Partiers' desire to oust House Speaker Paul Ryan, who failed to adhere strictly to complete support of Trump during the campaign.

Republicans, however, need to be very careful about reading too much into this election.  To be frank, this was far from an ideological landslide.  Trump may have won a majority of Electoral College votes, but let's be clear.  Hillary won a plurality of national popular votes.  The GOP may have retained the House and Senate.  But along the way, they lost about seven seats in the House and three, possibly four, seats in the Senate.  From these numbers alone, this was certainly not an election where the Republican presidential candidate was so popular that his coat tails swept in numerous new Republican legislators.

Exit poll numbers point to this being an election where the voters, or at least those who lived in battle ground states, rejected a candidate perceived as corrupt and dishonest.

A few numbers jumped out to me from the election results that support this conclusion.  First, Trump received fewer votes than Mitt Romney did in 2012.  Second, Hillary's margins of victory with African-American, Latino, Asian and Young voters were smaller than those of Barrack Obama from 2012.  What these numbers tell me is that the voters just did not show up for Hillary the way they did for Obama in 2012.  For whatever reasons, Hillary was just not as exciting a candidate as the current President.

This is not surprising given the atmosphere of the campaign.  This was by far an extremely negative campaign.  This was true of both sides.  From the beginning of September, the Clinton camp was running television ads emphasizing Trump's negatives.  And of course, Trump's campaign mantra was "Let's jail Hillary."  There was very little on display about issues or agendas.  This was totally a personality campaign.

Such campaigns traditionally result in low turn out.  Voters hear over and over again how this candidate is the next Satan, no the other candidate is the next Satan.  Many voters get so discouraged by the choice, that they simply choose not to vote.  Those who do vote choose mainly to vote against someone, and not for their chosen candidate.  In elections like this, it is usually the last bit of bad news released before the actual election that decides the winner.  Hillary drew the short straw, as the announcement of FBI Director James Comey eleven days before the election reminded many voters of her negatives.  By time Comey sounded the all clear two days before the election, on a Sunday when most Americans were watching football, it was too late.

The 2016 election can only be seen as more of a repudiation of a bad candidate than as a triumph of any particular ideology.  Republicans would do themselves a favor if they keep this in mind.  While they are poised to control the two policy making branches of government, and may have a heavy influence on the judicial branch for years to come, a sharp turn to the right could make this victory short-lived.  The House and Senate will stand for election again in just two years.  If there is a radical ideological shift in the government that proves unpopular, the GOP could find their slim majorities erased.

By:  William J. Kovatch, Jr.

This Election Has Shown It Is Time to Strengthen the Electoral College

Guess what.  The U.S. Constitution does not guarantee the right of the people to elect their president directly.   As any middle-schooler can tell you, our system is based on a College of Electors, selected by each state, who in turn have the authority to cast the first ballot for president.  In fact, the Constitution does not even guarantee the right of the people to select their electors.

Section 1 of Article 2 of the Constitution provides, “Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors . . . .”  (Emphasis added).  Although the Electoral College has been modified from time to time through amendments to the Constitution, none of those amendments explicitly guarantees the right of the people to vote either for the president or for an elector.

Put simply, the Constitution establishes a system where each state chooses electors to send to the Electoral College.  The number of electors is equal to the number of Representative to which that state is entitled in the House of Representative, plus the number of Senators.  In addition, the District of Columbia, which is not a state and is not entitled to any representation in Congress, is provided with no more than the same number of electors as the least populous states.  The electors meet in their respective states and vote, in separate ballots, for president and vice president.  The results are transmitted to Congress.

A person must win a majority of votes from the Electoral College to be elected president or vice president.  If no candidate wins a majority of votes for president, the House of Representatives has the task of choosing the president.  But, the House votes by state.  Each state is given one vote, and the Representatives can only for one of the three top vote getters from the Electoral College.  In the Senate, if there is no Electoral College majority for vice president, Senators vote for one of the two top vote getters. 

Why did the Founding Fathers establish such a system to select the chief executive of the United States?  As with many of the structures created through the Constitution, the Electoral College was created out of a fear of concentrating too much power in one person or one group of people.  To put simply, the Founding Fathers had just fought a revolution to break away from the rule of a tyrant. 

But as John Madison noted in Federalist No. 10, tyranny could include an “overbearing majority.”  Madison warned that a group of citizens, “whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole” could unite to push “some common impulse or passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”  Madison recognized that people are fallible and selfish, and that this would cause differences of opinions and interests.  A group of people, to whom he referred as “factions,” could join together to pursue a common zeal over their particular opinion or even of a particular leader.  And thus divided into different parties, they could develop “mutual animosity” and attempt “to vex or oppress each other” rather than “to cooperate for their common good.”  Madison’s driving point was that the tyranny of a majority could work to oppress and infringe on the rights of a minority.  For these reasons, he, and other Founding Fathers, opposed pure democracy.

Instead, Madison argued for the creation of a body of people chosen by the citizens through which the views of the public could be passed.  The hope was that by choosing wise representatives, the good of the public as a whole could prevail over parochial interests and passions.  That is, Madison argued for the creation of a republic.

Yet, through the Constitution, the Founding Fathers did not create a purely parliamentarian form of government.  That is, they did not create a government where the legislature chose the person or group of people who would execute the laws.  As Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist No. 88, the Founding Fathers wanted to make the chief executive officer, that is the president, independent from the legislature.  That is, they wanted the president to be free of any taint or influence from a pre-existing body.  It was thought that if the president were chosen by Congress, the president might be tempted to suppress his duty to pursue the good of the whole to the temptation to please Congress in order to preserve his tenure in office.

Putting the two fears together, that is the fear that a majority can itself be tyrannical, and the fear that an executive who is chosen by the legislature would be dependent upon the legislature and thus sacrifice the pursuit of the common good, the Founding Fathers devised a system whereby the people would choose a group who would come together only once for the sole purpose of selecting a chief executive, and then be disbanded.  The hope was that this smaller group of people, which we call the Electoral College, would give serious deliberation to the qualities needed for leadership, and choose a wise and virtuous leader.

In that way, the Electoral College was meant to protect the new republic from the dangers of demagoguery.  That is, a charismatic person could influence the general public by inflaming passions instead of reason.  Once in power, a demagogue could then trample on the rights of the minority.

Under the system envisioned by the Founding Fathers through the Constitution, the role of the people was no to select a particular person to be their president.  Rather, they were to select a group of people wise enough to select a person to be the president.

Unfortunately, in practice this is not was happens.  Through tradition, over time, the states have mostly chosen to hold popular elections where that state’s entire delegation of Electors would go to the winner of the popular vote.  In all but Maine and Nebraska, the states have chosen a winner take all approach. That is, each candidate nominates a slate of Electors, and the winner has his or her chosen Electors named to the Electoral College.  Thus, instead of choosing a group of people, individually, to in turn select our president, we vote for the person we want to be president, and the state’s Electors go to that person.  This turns the presidential election into nothing more than fifty-one different elections.

This system, which has grown out of tradition and not out of any constitutional requirement, has some unintended consequences.  First, it makes political parties indispensable.  Second, it distorts the popular vote.

With respect to political parties, in order to win the presidency, a person must be able to garner a few hundred people who will be loyal and vote for him when the Electoral College meets.  This means that a candidate must have an organization, and it must be on a national scale.  This is why it is virtually impossible for independent or third party candidates to win the U.S. presidency.

With respect to the popular vote, each state is guaranteed at least three Electors.  But, there is no guarantee that population is evenly spread across the states.  Thus, in less populous states, like Montana and North Dakota, voters have a disproportionately large say in who will become president.  It also means that it is entirely possible for a person to receive more popular votes for president, but because those votes may be concentrated in one state, lose the Electoral College count.  This has happened three times in U.S. history.

But, there is yet a third unintended consequence.  This system as it is currently configured is more vulnerable to demagoguery.  Specifically, most people today receive their news through television.  Television is a medium that thrives on images and short messages.  To get a message across, particularly on news programs, images must elicit an emotional response and do so in a short period of time.  Thus, the ten second sound bite reigns.  Television is not a medium conducive to a reasonable deliberation of complex issues.

We see this now in news shows and political fora.  Formats are not meant to encourage an intelligent dialogue as they are to encourage shouting, loud disagreement and entertainment that targets the short attention span.  In order to prevail, a person must look good, and have a catchy slogan.

But it is this manipulation of passions and emotions that motivated the Founding Fathers to create the Electoral College in the first place.  And indeed, this 2016 election has demonstrated the very danger that gave our Founding Fathers nightmares.  Both major political parties have been manipulated by demagoguery, and thus have nominated candidates with which many in the general public are completely dissatisfied.  Name recognition and entertainment have become more important factors in selecting candidates than a serious discussion of the issues that face this country.  Thus, this year many U.S. voters are left with the choice of voting for a candidate they don’t like in order to stop a candidate they hate.

The answer to this dilemma may simply be to strengthen the Electoral College, and have it return more to the roots of what the Founding Fathers intended.  That is, the U.S. public should go back to selecting a group of people who will in turn select the president rather than voting for the president directly.

One way to strengthen the Electoral College would be to eliminate the winner take all system.  Rather than vote for a single person, and all of a state’s Electors go to that person, voters should be forced to choose the Electors directly and by name.  If a state has six Electors, then the voters in that state should select six people to attend the Electoral College.  The names of the presidential candidates themselves should not be on the ballot.

The elections should not permit voters in a single sweep to select a slate of candidates. Each candidate should be selected separately.  Moreover, the candidates for Electors should not be grouped by party or by whom they support.  Indeed, nowhere on the ballot should a political party appear.  They should be listed either randomly or alphabetically.  This would have the effect of having a voter actually research the candidates for Electors, and determine if that person would be wise enough to in turn select the president.  If a person wants to select Electors all from one party, then have that voter research and know that information before coming to the ballot box.

Moreover, election of the Electors should permit vote stacking.  That is, if a state entitled to six Electors, then each voter in that state should be entitled to six votes and use them as they please.  If one voter wants to use all six votes on a single candidate to ensure that a particular viewpoint has a seat at the table, then so be it.

Finally, the Electoral College should not be a single day event where the Electors simply cast a vote.  To the contrary, it should be a multiday affair, where each Elector has an opportunity to say either what issues they find important, what qualities in a candidate they find important, or which particular person they may want as their president.

Yes, these proposals would remove the choice of presidency one step further away from voters.  But that does not make it undemocratic.  Voters will still have choice and a say in their chief executive.  But that choice would be less likely left to the winds of passions, ignorance and demagoguery.  It would instead make the process more deliberative and serious.

By: William J. Kovatch, Jr.