I Propose a New Electoral College!

I learned many important things about our American government in middle school civics, such as the fact that the American people don’t actually choose their President. No, that decision is made by a school called the Electoral College, a near relative to Clown College.

This was very revolutionary to my young teenage mind, considering the fact that I had always been taught that government was “of the people, by the people, for the people, or else we will all perish from the Earth and miss out on next week’s episode of American Idol” (Today's English paraphrased version of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address). But in middle school I found there was actually a university made up of students who were president makers and breakers.

I imagined it to be some sort of secret Skull and Bones-type of society made up of Bilderberg’s, Rockefeller’s and Bush’s who did all their cogitating and conniving over who would be the next president behind locked 12 foot thick solid oak doors somewhere twenty miles beneath the Pentagon with endless supplies of cigars and brandy to aid their thinking faculties. Then, when a decision was made, smoke would billow out of the Pentagon’s chimneys, confusing journalists the world over whether it was actually black or white, thus forcing the Florida Supreme Court to choose the president, which in turn would cause Al Gore to try to convince the American people that the Constitution was not in fact created, but rather evolved, which would in turn lead to the growing popularity of a previously insignificant character named Chad.

However, my mind had not yet matured enough to realize that the whole electing situation was far worse than I had thought. The electoral college was in fact not made up of competent decision-makers, but moles. This is true because (a) they make their decisions underground, (b) they are buddies of government officials voted into office by government officials, namely state legislatures and (c) no one has any idea what their names are. As we can see, this is not a pretty picture, which is why 50% of the American people are not satisfied with the person who becomes president, while the other 50% lament the fact that they didn’t take the time to vote in the first place.

But my mind has matured a bit more since those naïve middle school days, back when I actually thought taxes were used to pay off the federal debt. I therefore have a proposition. We the people do have a choice! We just have to make it! We vote in our state representatives, don’t we? Who do they represent? You and me! And if they don’t, then we can either vote them out of office or secretly poison their bedtime sedatives (Article II, Section 2, Clause 134).

So, I propose that “we the people” contact our state representatives 275,984,103 times a day about who should be accepted to Electoral College. This will indeed intrigue our representatives, because usually us gullible American’s don’t give a care about Electoral College. But times have changed, because—as we can visibly see from the presidential campaign this summer—none of the presidential contenders are competent enough to rule a superpower in a dangerous and volatile and violent and WMD-infested world.

Thus the Founding Fathers, with the foresight and wisdom of 2,000 owls, placed these guidelines within the Constitution directing what sort of people should become members of the Electoral College: “But no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.”

Thus enter the new electors, specifically hand-picked “of the people, by the people, for the people, through the scared-out-of-their-wits-of-being-poisoned state representatives.” But who should we choose to make this momentous decision? Of course, people who know how to rule a superpower in a dangerous and volatile and violent and WMD-infested world, such as champion Risk and Sid Meier’s Civilization players. Perhaps even the one and only Sid Meier himself.

Seriously, who else could do it? These strategy game champion players know what it takes to put terrorists in their place, implement order in a chaotic world and invade Kamchatka from Alaska. They sure as beans should know how to choose a president. Perhaps, while we’re on the subject, we should consider changing the name of Electoral College to something more interest-arresting to middle school civics students like World Dominion College or Strategy War Games Champions College or Give Us A President Who Knows How To Kick The Tar Out Of Iran, Syria, North Korea and Kamchatca College. I don’t know—I guess we can leave that decision in the hands of our newly elected and quite competent electors. Perhaps then our young boys will want to be "electors" when they grow up.

So let’s stand up, America! Perhaps we will even get to see our names in middle school civics books 20 years down the road. Maybe we’ll be known as the generation who finally made Electoral College understandable for teens and simpler for civics instructors to teach. Who knows—maybe we can get Sid Meier to run for president.