by Lou Jones

Created on: February 06, 2008

The Electoral College, like almost everything that stands between the voter and our nation's policy, should be abolished. (In case you're wondering, the one check I would want to see on direct democracy would be a solid ban on the creation of referendums based in bigotry, hatred, and other vile -isms. So vote on where your taxes go, on labor laws, on how much we should spend on this that, or the other, but no voting that all left-handed people must be confined in left-handed reeducation camps until they become right-handed. Just get over your childhood fear of an elbow hitting you in your ribs at the dinner table, already!)

It's bad enough that our choices have always been narrowed down to two rich white guys who promised the most goodies to the world's richest corporations (wink wink nudge nudge can't promise anything really, that would be illegal but...you take care of me, and...chuckle). At least this year, maybe racism and sexism will take a long-overdue pounding, but I'll believe in miracles when they happen.

Then we get to wonder if those friendly voting machines are going to count our votes accurately. Do the Democrats have their own voting machine company buddies yet, or at least their own hackers?

Then there are the third parties. Who? Yeah. Those guys. The ones you never hear about, because they didn't make enough rich corporations happy, so they're lucky to have a dozen commercials on the air, and of course they're banned from the debates. Heaven forbid they actually be allowed to ask or answer a question outside the narrow strip of center-right that candidates from both of the major parties stick so carefully to.

Back to the electoral college. Just one of many gripes I have about our political system, in case I was being too quiet and reserved for you to pick up on my discontent. What is this relic still hanging around for? We've got yo-yos in Congress foaming at the mouth, eager to alter the Constitution to protect us from two grown adults cavorting in same-sex matrimony and a Supreme Court so happy to ignore the Bill of Rights that it pats the US government on the head and says it's okay to violate the Constitutional rights of a US citizen, since they've since ceased said violations (after two years of holding a man without charges, representation, and protection against cruel and unusual punishment), but we can't get rid of this stinking Electoral College?

Even if you're willing to overlook seemingly random electronic voting errors that without

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