After all these years of conscious constitutional planning we have come down to this. Donald Trump has been elected ‘officially’ as the President of the United States. Yes, it’s true. You are not reading a fictional political drama that has a happy ending. Doesn’t certainly seem so with the results of the Electoral College that came out on Monday, 19th December 2016 that confirmed our fears about the Oval Office.
But who exactly are these people who comprise the Electoral College? Electoral College was formed to protect the interests of the nation from ignorant voters. Citizens of the United States vote in each state at a general election to choose a slate of “electors” pledged to vote for a party’s candidate every four years. These electors then cast their votes for the President and the Vice President on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December.
It looks like we are living in the scene of Caesar’s murder where Brutus (viz Electoral College) stabs the Emperor (viz the sensible people). Et Tu, Brute?
Basically how the election process works in the United States is that the citizens cast their votes and the specific electors to the state analyse the votes to then select the President of United States. Usually the votes of the electors are supposed to reflect their citizen counterparts’ choice. If in case the electors are not convinced by the choice of the common man, they can go ahead and vote for the other contender. This process is called as ‘Faithless Voting” as the clique considers to go away from what the public has decided. Obviously such cases are rare. Firstly rare for any particular elector to not consider the choice of his state, secondly rare for even the majority of the electors to not hear the voice of the nation.
But it has been done. As many as 8 electors were ‘faithless’ in this election as they didn’t vote for their republican candidate, Donald Trump. This is the highest number ever in the history. Trust Trump to make for a polarizing election. On the other hand, the only time when the U.S., saw a major case of faithless voting was in 2000 when Al Gore won the popular vote but lost out to George Bush through the Electoral College process. Well we all know how that went!
Now 16 years later, the situation seems as bad if not worse. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote against Donald Trump buts lost to him at the Electoral College. On Monday the College met, after numerous pleas from the good citizens of the country who cannot see Trump triumph. And although we knew that there wasn’t much hope, there was still a flicker that the electors would do what’s right. But they didn’t and now we are left with a clueless President which is ‘unpresidented.’ Why you ask? We are still looking for an answer for that one.
