Faithleslly Electing Hillary Clinton

HILLARY CLINTON WON the popular vote by approximately two million votes, which means that in a true direct democracy she would have been elected president. But alas, we have a representative democracy, a republic, carefully designed by James Madison to prelude the "lesser sorts" as he put it, from exercising political power. In any society the poor greatly outnumber the wealthy, so a true democracy, which has never existed, would mean that a well organized political party of the poor could out vote the wealthy elite, and seize their wealth and power. Plato and Madison, confronted with the same dilemma, had different solutions. In "The Republic" Plato advocated redistributing the wealth so as to render a direct democracy possible without societal upheaval and class warfare. Madison, himself wealthy, among the "better sort" as he put it, proposed in the federalist papers that the new nation erect barriers to direct democracy, including the electoral college, as a safeguard against "mob rule" as he put it. He got what he wanted, and the new constitution was designed by Madison and other wealthy elites to keep power in the hands of the wealthy, where it remains to this day, to the detriment of we the poor people. But all is not lost. There is no requirement that members of the electoral college cast their votes for the candidate to whom they are pledged. They can act as "faithless" delegates, as we put it. On December 19th the electoral college meets to vote, and is it theoretically albeit remotely possible that Hillary Clinton could still be elected president of the United States. What a hoot that would be. So far over four million people have signed petitions online urging electors to do precisely that, and the number is growing, and could reach large numbers in the roughly one month until the college convenes. According to the numbers, it would probably take only about two or three dozen members of the electoral college to faithlessly change their votes to Clinton, people from Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida to do the trick. This would be no more or less unconstitutional than the result of the election itself, and would be as legal and in keeping with the constitutional principle of representative democracy as the electoral college. One million dollars per elector for about thirty or forty electors would probably do the trick. I can think of no conceivable elector who would not become faithless for a cool million. And why not? Since all political elections are bought and paid for anyway, why not take the process one step further? Three times, 1876, 2000, and 2016, the democratic candidate has garnered more popular votes than the republican, but has lost the election in the electoral college; isn't that proof enough that the time has long since come to overthrow our system of elite governance, and put political power in the hands of we the people, where it has never yet resided? The greatest benefit of all, aside from having a good president instead of the imbecile we appear to be stuck with, would be watching Donald Trump and his legion of poorly educated right wing angry white men and their babes have a cow.