There’s no way around it.  Our political system flummoxes me to the max.  Last night I watched as the delegates for state after state pledged support for Biden AND for Bernie Sanders — who is no longer running.   I do understand that having a firm delegate count gives Bernie more opportunity to influence the party platform but it is still mighty confusing.  Perhaps all the Democratic candidates should have hung on and the platform could have reflected a percentage of the ideas of each according to … blah blah blah.  I guess I still think in terms of “majority wins” and trust that the chosen one will honestly try to consider all ideas…  Probably naive to the max.

But that isn’t the part of our election process that bothers me the most.  It’s the electoral college.  I’ve had the reasons explained to me ad nauseum and I still don’t get it.  Why, when I lived in a populous state, did my vote count for less than it does now that I live here in Washington.  What is fair about that?

This is what the pro-electoral-college folks say:  The suitability of the Electoral College system is a matter of ongoing debate. Supporters of the Electoral College argue that it is fundamental to American federalism, that it requires candidates to appeal to voters outside large cities, increases the political influence of small states, preserves the two-party, and makes the electoral outcome appear more legitimate than that of a nationwide popular vote. 

Opponents argue that the system is antithetical to a democracy that strives for a standard of “one person, one vote” in that it can thwart the will of the majority of the nation’s voters by producing an outcome where one candidate wins the popular vote but another wins the electoral vote and thus the presidency (which happened most recently in the 2016 election makes it easy for candidates to focus their resources disproportionately on just a few “swing states”, and gives citizens in less populated states more voting power than those in more populous states.

Well, I’m here to tell you that I live outside (WAY outside) a large city and I don’t give a fig for the two-party system.  I want to vote for the candidate who makes the most sense and has the best plan for our nation, no matter what party he/she belongs to.  And I want my vote to count no matter where I live. Period.  In our highly mobile society, demographics change by the minute. I can’t believe that people change their political stripes if they move from one state to another.  Why shouldn’t each vote be counted no matter where you live?  And just which three million votes of Hillary’s weren’t counted, anyway?

But… it seems to be the old dead horse story and the Old Boy Network prevails.  We can but hope that truth and justice prevail as well.  And P.S. — I do like the virtual convention format!  Much more user friendly, at least so far.