Those in the medical profession say that it is better to perform the right operation wrongly than to perform the wrong operation correctly.
To the patient, however, none is better than the other since the patient remains uncured after acquiring a host of needless scars and pain.
Conversely, we could also ask if it is better to reach wrong conclusions by using right information than to reach right conclusions through using wrong channels.
The US presidential elections are finally over. Thank God!
Sadly, however, the outcome of more than two years of vicious campaigning is a letdown to those in America and abroad who were following the contest hoping to see democracy in action.
Americans and people the world over are not so much awed by the winner than they are by how the winner prevailed.
The election of Donald Trump vis-├á-vis votes cast for his opponent has renewed analysis of the true meaning of ‘democracy’ and the entire world is asking a simple question: what then is democracy if a person who got more votes lost the presidency to the one who got less votes?
At the time of writing (Saturday morning, Nov 19th), Hillary Clinton had amassed 62,523,126 votes (48%) to Donald Trump’s 61,201,031 votes (47%) with vote counting still ongoing in the states of California and Michigan.
But the twists do not end there!
Trump was declared the winner on election night but he has not been elected yet! The election of the President of the United States always takes place “on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December”, which this year happens to be December 19th, 2016!
Let us backtrack a little, shall we?
Americans do not vote directly for a presidential candidate; they vote for “electors” in every state and these electors “must be appointed on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November”.
Each state has a maximum number of such electors depending on their populations.
The state of California, with a population of over 39 million people, has a massive 55 electors, while smaller states like Vermont (population 625,317) has 3 electors.
So, on US Presidential Elections Day, held every four years “on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November”, Americans do not vote for a president per se, but for a handful of people, or electors, in each state.
These electors, at times referred to as ‘the Electoral College’, will, as stated by the US Constitution, meet in their States “on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December” to elect the President.
But the dangerous part is that “there is no Constitutional provision or Federal law that requires Electors to vote according to the results of the popular vote in their states…”
Imagine the ensuing chaos if the Electoral College ‘rebelled’ and, on Dec 19th 2016, voted for Hillary Clinton…because if that happens, yes, Clinton would be awarded the presidency.
Interestingly, billions of dollars were spent by multi-millionaires who wanted a job that pays a paltry US$400 000 a year.
At first glance, the US presidential election seems full of safeguards to prevent any chicanery or rigging. Indeed, it would be very difficult to rig a US presidential election considering that the elections are run by elected officials from either party in all states, including elected officials in all the towns, cities, districts and counties in the country.
Be that as it may, we already know how the winner lost the election and how the loser got the presidency: because of the Electoral College.
And, for that, we have Alexander Hamilton to thank and that is why today he is camped on the US ten dollar bill.
Fearful of people with “talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, (that) may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors…” Hamilton was not happy with the way the directives in the Constitution were being abused.
As a founding father of the United States, he acquiesced to the part of what is today known as the Electoral College so as “to stop demagogues from manipulating the electorate”.
America’s founding fathers did not trust the voters.
So they added this little piece about the electors who had to be people of means; people who owned immovable property or so-called “qualified citizens” and who would, therefore, be expected to make sound decisions to protect their own property and the country because they would, I think, be tied to the existence and survival of both.
It sounds good for democracy, does it?
It is a shame that something so well-intentioned was also born out of racist maneuvers to keep black people from making a difference in the electoral process.
Fearing that votes from slaves in the north would overwhelm votes from the south, they came up with the “three-fifths compromise” where a slave was considered three fifths of a person.
Happily enough, so much has changed since then.
That edict, which the US founding fathers encrypted into the US Constitution to protect both the nation and its citizens minus the slaves, today disenfranchises US citizens of all colours across the whole country.
Vestiges of immoral, racist political thought linger in the US Constitution to this day, otherwise Donald Trump would not be president-elect because, you see, one-person-one-vote went way away from Donald Trump but he won the presidency because of the Electoral College, which actually invalidates the democratic one-person-one-vote practice.
Where, then, is the democracy?
America has a lot to learn about electoral democracy but small consolations come from California Senator Barbara Boxer who, last week, introduced a Bill “to amend the Constitution in order to abolish the Electoral College”.
Good going!
She has seen two of her Democratic Party candidates (Al Gore and Hillary Clinton) lose the presidency after winning the popular vote and wants to fight the Electoral College away.
But Barbara Boxer is retiring and will leave the US Senate in January 2017.
Small consolations indeed.
