“United States” of America v. united citizens of America

2016 elections ended with surprise for all parties concerned and for the public. Consternation and anxiety overshadowed hope and confidence that an election is expected to generate. Post-election analyses relate the outcome to, among others, the widening economic gap in the society, the gap between the educational levels of voters, perceived connection between increase in crime and illegal immigration from the South, fear from terrorism expected to be perpetrated by future immigrants from the Muslim Middle Eastern countries, the claim (fueled by extreme patriots) that the US lost its superiority in the globalization process it promoted, and also  to the electoral college system. Of course, all claims have differing levels of truth, so do the views that campaign interferences caused by the FBI Director, and Wikileaks. But, at the core of this contentious election result lies the supersession of the popular vote by the electoral vote, like the one occurred also in 2000. A challenge to election results when the two groups of votes are consistent is very rare or subdued.

The electoral college has been constituted by the Constitution (Art. 2, Section 1.2 as amended by XIIth amendment) to reflect the states’ concern over the federal authority; after all, the Constitution had to be ratified by states. It should be inconceivable now to amend the Constitution with a view to abolishing the electoral college, considering that the states and a great number of citizens who despise the central authority and favor the state authority would jealously protect the status quo. Furthermore, such repeal would never succeed so long as the Supreme Court has enough number of judges who want to preserve the Constitution in its elementary and rudimentary state of its infancy, by believing in the legal philosophy of law for the sake of law (Scalia type), not law for the sake of the people. Consequently, citizens will have to live with this reality, but they need to learn how to live with it.

The frustration of citizens, when the result of elections is contrary to the choice of the majority, arises from the inadequate education of citizens about the real facts of the election process. Namely, presidential elections are announced and campaigned, and ballots indicate that they are “for the President of the U.S.” This statement gives the impression to citizens that the President is elected by and for them, because citizens take the term “the U.S.” as the federal entity for the people and all the people. The reality in practice is that the intervention by the Electoral College in the election process makes the presidential election by and for the united states. Citizens vote, in reality, an instruction to their state electoral college about the candidate their state should vote for. Therefore, citizens are in fact mislead by the way the elections are organized. Sometimes, even some presidential candidates recognize the vagary of the enigmatic electoral college after they are already in the primaries, as it happened again during this election. President-elects invariably state in their victory speech, and occasionally repeat thereafter, that they are the President of all citizens. Even this is an inaccurate, legally baseless (more precisely, unconstitutional) statement. The hard, bitter, factual, and practical reality is that the President is "the president of states", not of the people, plain and simple.

In fact, the preambular sentence of the Constitution clearly states, "in order to form a more perfect union ... do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America". In other words, the Constitution was established by the people for "the United States of America", not for the people. Let us not forget that the concept of governance "for the people" entered in the political jargon seventy-six years after the Constitution.

This fact has an added importance for an immigrants’ society that we are so proud of. The legal and political system forgets that the citizenry consists of a constant inflow of immigrants. Immigrants generally come from unitarian (non-federal) systems, and while becoming U.S. citizen they pledge allegiance to “the U.S.”, not to a given state within the Union. Accordingly, they conceive the country as a whole, and the states as local administrations, not entities hostile to the central authority. They cannot comprehend a system founded on distrust of the central authority, for which they came to trust their security and their future.

Informing citizens accurately of the peculiarity of the federal system during the campaign, and particularly on ballots, might greatly alleviate grievances and frustrations at the end of elections where “states’ vote” (electoral college vote) does not reflect the votes of the people. We should be at least honest if we cannot or are not willing to change the election system.

Nov. 12, 2016