Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for January 06, 2021

In Gambia… voting is done with marbles. Maybe they have the right idea?

Great strip today :) Although it’s a cross between a fairy tale and a horror tale.

Cut to the end. Did they live happily ever after?

What is an electoral college? Is it popular? how does one apply to it?

Poor kid isn’t gonna be able to sleep for a week now.

Still don’t.

We could never vote with marbles here. Way too many voters have lost theirs!

What are the admission criteria to this college? and can you get a student visa?

In days of old the people of the US didn’t elect their Senators either. No one had written a Constitution before, so there weren’t a lot of precedents to draw on so some bad ideas were included. We fixed the part about the Senators decades ago. There have been several attempts to fix the problems with the electoral college in the last 200+ years, none of which really worked. Time to scrap that mistake like the error of appointing Senators.

Unless I am missing something, today is the last chance the Republics have to make assholes out of themselves over this election. I am counting on them screwing themselves bigly.

It’s a nightmare, kid!

S**T, I couldn’t even spell Electricale!

those were the days

Once powers are abused, changes are made

The best fairy tales are the worst stories. …sad, that.

That’s because the Electoral College never differed from the popular vote in my whole life. With Bush/Gore, that suddenly changed. At least that one was really close.

But then a candidate “won” despite losing by THREE MILLION VOTES, and then “governed” (if I may use the term losely) like a madman, who wasn’t accountable at ALL to the citizens. But we were told that the Electoral College was ALL that mattered.

And now, he lost by SEVEN MILLION votes AND the Electoral College, and the same people are suddenly claiming that the Electoral College doesn’t matter either!

He won’t succeed, but we actually have a President who lost the election and is trying to stage a coup against the United States. Because he’s a sick man who can’t simply admit that he lost. And too many people who are so un-American that they have no problem with that. And a political party that no longer stands for ANYTHING but total allegiance to an arrogant, greedy, loudmouthed jerk.

Why scare the poor kid so badly? Trying to give them nightmares?

The electoral college and the primaries need to go. Go back to the Lincoln era. Most votes in popular election is President. Second most votes is VP. The two party system is broken. Moderates don’t stand a chance to even make it to November.

North Korea, Russia, China and Venezuala get along FINE without an Electoral College! :-)

So much for the peaceful transfer of power. The legend has now been tarnished for generations to come. It’s like watching a cherished friend age and become less able. Sad, but just as inevitable.

No governmental structure can sustain itself when when it is comprised of individuals whose main focus is its destruction by the injection of personal animus and greed. DC it seems is heavily populated by people who are more interested in hogging it up at the public trough than conducting the business of the people.

As with any one of advanced age, I have one or two major regrets. One may be foolish, i.e., I really hoped to see mankind actually exploring the stars by now. Been my dream since I saw the first space flight carrying a human hero, and maybe before that.

The other appears to be even more foolish in light of present events. I had hoped that over the years our government would have realized that the US offers the best chance to counter the sectarianism, racism, bigotry, totalitarianism, and military aggression that seems to infect all but a few places in the world. Instead it appears to have made itself the model for many of those behaviors and I deeply regret it.

During the current crises we see news reports and images of heroes on many local scenes, risking all to alleviate want and suffering. Shows we still have a future.

They also accepted the outcome of an election.

Once upon a time, most people didn’t know or care about the electoral college, because they were foolish, ignorant and unlettered. This came about partly by the design of their power-hungry elected officials, who desired their ignorance (for the ignorant are compliant and easily misled), and partly through their own sloth. So they decided to eliminate the electoral college and revert to simple majoritarian democratic rule, forgetting (or having never been taught) the ancient, awful, cautionary tale of the Athenians. And, thus, by gradual turns, they devolved from a proud and free people to a race of dreary serfs, ruled over by petty, evil tyrants. The end.

From what I’ve seen in commentary in media and among friends, the tendency is for people towards the Republican party or conservative ideology end of the spectrum to be more in favor of keeping the Electoral College and the Democratic party & liberal ideology towards abolishing it.This is somewhat understandable, based on current popular trends. It would be very shortsighted of the Dems, though.Besides the possibility of trends eventually changing and Dems needing the Electoral College in face of diminished popular numbers – the Electoral College actually saved them this time.The Electoral College isn’t just filtering (state) popular votes into Electoral College blocks – it is a key element of the power of the states in this matter. Imagine for one minute if there had been no Electoral College this past year. Just a national popular vote. No states certifying their popular votes. No states deciding local election law within the US Constitution but based on the needs & preferences of their own population. Trump would have applied a national standard to votes, admissibility, registration, ID, early voting, mail-in voting – allowing cherry-picking, blocking, arbitrary challenges everywhere.

A degree from the Electoral College is worth about as much as one from Trump University.

Trump seems to think an American election is some kind of video game. All he has to do is accumulate enough “cheat codes” to come out on top. If he loses, he’ll just get another life. Life’s like bankruptcy, right?

Why do they call it a “college”? Most of them are idiots.

And yes my darling this was before the country became so divided. But if you think it’s divided now, if anyone tries to get rid of it, watch out for the real divide. Fly over states would have an excellent reason to decide whether to succeed or not. If the coastal population high states have total domination over the country, why stick around?

Back in the old days when the Constitution was written, it was impossible to get a popular vote total, and the Electoral College might have been the best way to do it. Communication was a rider on horseback, which would have taken days for vote totals (even IF you could get totals) to Washington. Times and communications have changed a bit, rendering this old system obsolete.

But enough about Hillary Clinton…..

“And to this very day, most people have virtually no knowledge of the Constitution, the Amendments, or any of the other laws that affect their most basic rights and, yet, they still seem to believe that they will live happily ever after. The end.”

was that back when they voted who they thought would be best for USA or at least themselves, not who would hurt the other side more

Flash forward: Many still neither know nor care. They still think the election as-is represents the will of the people.

The real irony is that the electoral college was conceived of as part of the ‘checks and balances’ that limited power: the electors were supposed to be non-partisan, like judges, who’d make sure the voters weren’t being fooled into backing someone who was a slick-talking con man or outright incompetent. They were to choose the most qualified person. But that was before the birth of our political parties.

I miss the old days when I didn’t care about politics

LOL! I love this, Wiley!

I didn’t think anything could make me laugh today. Thank you, Wiley.

…especially in light of today’s events.

This was almost prophetic Wiley.

This very grim fairy tale comes with its own automatic update — today’s news. Prophetic, indeed!

I wish it would end.

And yet, here I am up at 12:24 a.m. Pacific Time, waiting for them to finish the bloody electoral vote! Glad I’m not on the east coast!