Take up the Electoral College from your closet. Lay it in a pile. Stare at it. I think you want to keep it. After all, consider:
• If the Electoral College is abolished, people would be forced to stop ignoring Massachusetts during campaign season, and it would be awkward after all those years of pretending not to see it, during which Massachusetts started to build a life and identity of its own that didn’t revolve around the attention of presidential candidates.
• The Electoral College is very old, and why would you want to get rid of something very old, even if it did not spark joy? Consider measles, something we thought about getting rid of and then decided to hang onto because of nostalgia!
• Has it ever steered us astray?
• Okay, point taken, but if the election of Donald Trump occurred within the guardrails of the Electoral College, I can’t even picture what might be lurking outside those guardrails?
• FiveThirtyEight would be forced to change its name.
• Without access to electors, we would be unable to readily select a Holy Roman Emperor if occasion ever arises.
• We cherish norms, such as FiveThirtyEight’s name.
• An ambiguous note from James Madison says “NEVER PERMIT YOURSELF TO BE PARTED FROM [SMUDGE]”; the smudge could be “Electoral College.”
• Like the appendix, unsure of its function — maybe just keep it so long as it doesn’t rupture the country and flood it with dangerous bile?
• The only thing that kept the dreaded Samuel Tilden from halls of power; if there is one thing we have learned from time travelers staggering back, gasping and reeling from the 19th century, it is that Samuel Tilden must be stopped at all costs.
• If not for the Electoral College, Andrew Jackson would have been president even sooner? I think?
• The sneaking terror that with the abolition of the Electoral College, no one would ever visit your state again
• (No, that can’t be true. Your state is interesting! You live in a good state.)
• A change to the Electoral College in the wake of Pluto’s downgrade to non-planet would further destabilize the foundation of the fifth-grade curriculum.
• Voting is a big hassle, and without the Electoral College, suddenly everyone in every state would feel it was something they were expected to do.
• If the Electoral College is abolished, people who like abolishing things will only be encouraged, and then goodbye, ICE!
• Electors, released from the college, would rove rampant across America, decimating the crops.
• It’s nice to have at least ONE college not DOMINATED by LIBERAL ELITES.
• Listen, are we sure people would still want to visit all the states? Wyoming? Some people — not saying you, but some people — might never think about Wyoming again.
• (No offense to Wyoming, it is just the state with the highest elector-to-person ratio!)
• Brave electors frequently turn tide of elections by standing on conscience.
Alexandra Petri | The Washington Post
Follow Alexandra Petri on Twitter, @petridishes.
