McGath: We Don't Vote For Presidential Candidates Or Electors

Anyone familiar with the US electoral system knows that it's a sham. Till this week, though, I didn't know how much of a sham it is. According to the Secretary of State's office, our votes don't mean anything. The bosses of the two big parties make the decision.

Officially, the names of candidates are on the ballot, but we aren't voting for them. The names are proxies for slates of electors who (we hope) will vote for them. Under the US Constitution, we're really electing the electors who elect the president.

At least that was how I thought it worked. But I got to thinking: If these names stand for slates of electors, then others should be able to run against them for the office of elector. However, the Secretary of State's "Filing for Office" page doesn't include provisions for filing for elector. It does include a provision for filing for president. It requires getting 3,000 signatures during a plague. If you file successfully, I assume you're expected to provide a slate of four people who will be your electors.

But why not just run for elector? I emailed the Secretary of State's office to ask how I'd do that. Not that I'm likely to; I hate making public speeches and appearances. I just wanted to know how someone would do it. A reply came promptly, and it was astonishing. I quote it in full.

"Electors are not elected by the voting public. Electors for the Republican and Democratic parties have already been selected at the State Conventions held by both parties"

No name was signed to the reply.

Let that sink in. Not only don't we elect the president, we don't elect the electors. The party bosses chose them before a candidate was even nominated.

Who do we vote for? Political parties. Our choices are "Democratic party bosses" or "Republican party bosses." You can't legally run against them as a candidate for elector.

This shouldn't surprise us. The Democratic and Republican bosses keep control of elections in many other ways. They exclude other candidates from debates. They put burdensome requirements on getting on the ballot, while giving themselves ballot slots for free.

Write-ins for president are meaningless. We can't write in the names of electors, and per the electoral process, we can't vote for presidential candidates. If a write-in got a majority of the votes, they wouldn't be votes for electors. They'd be thrown out.

The electors aren't committed to the candidate but to the party. We can bet they're chosen for party loyalty above all else. They'd vote for Darth Vader if their party nominated him.

Most people don't understand the convoluted electoral process. They think that by filling in the box next to a candidate's name, they're voting for a candidate.

More knowledgeable people think they're voting for electors chosen for their commitment to the nominee. They're wrong too.

According to the Secretary of State's office, we aren't doing either. The bosses of the two big parties run the show. As they pretend to offer us a choice, they rig the system to keep all competitors out.