a sermon by Rev. J. Mark Worth
Five times in the history of the United States the voters have chosen one candidate for president, but the Electoral College, or in one case the U.S. House of Representatives, has chosen someone else. As we ponder the results of this fifth time the voters have chosen one candidate, and the Electoral College will choose a different person to be president, what gives us hope for the future?
- From Rev. Theodore Parker, from a sermon, “Of Justice and the Conscience,” published in 1853. “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice. Things refuse to be mismanaged long. Jefferson trembled when he thought of slavery and remembered that God is just.”
- From Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968). I don’t know the source of this quote: “We must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope.”
Five times in the history of the United States the voters have chosen one candidate for president, but the Electoral College, or in one case the U.S. House of Representatives, has chosen someone else.
In 1824 Andrew Jackson won the support of the largest number of voters in a four-way race, but with no winner in the Electoral College, the House of Representatives chose John Quincy Adams to be president. In 1876 Samuel J. Tilden won the popular vote, but Rutherford B. Hayes won the Electoral vote and became president. In 1888 Grover Cleveland won the popular vote, but Benjamin Harrison won the Electoral College. In 2000 Al Gore won the most votes, but George W. Bush won the Electoral College. And now in 2016 Hillary Clinton had the support of the largest number of voters, but Donald Trump is slated to win the Electoral College.
Now, I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist here, but there’s something Andrew Jackson, Samuel Tilden, Grover Cleveland, Al Gore, and Hillary Clinton all have in common besides the fact that each of them won the popular vote and someone else became president. It is that every one of them was a Democrat.
So let’s put it this way. Yes, Donald Trump is right about at least one thing. The system is rigged. It was rigged in Trump’s favor when he was born white, male, heterosexual, and incredibly wealthy. It was rigged in his favor every time his father bailed out one of his business failures. It was rigged every time his wealth and power allowed him to get away with his sexually abusive behavior. The system has been rigged in Donald Trump’s favor all of his life in so many ways that I won’t bore you with the details. And yes, this year our dysfunctional election process rigged the system to favor Donald Trump.
Why do we even have an Electoral College? Remember, when we wrote our Constitution, this was something no one had ever done before! How would we organize this new thing, a representative government? We decided to have a House of Representatives, elected by the people, which meant white men who in some states also had to be property owners.
And we decided to have a Senate elected, not by the people, but by state legislatures. And it remained that way for about 100 years before we decided to let the people elect their Senators.
And what will we call our king who will not be a king? We decided that he is the one who presides so he will be the president. And in his wisdom, George Washington said he did not want to be called, “Your Highness,” or “Your Majesty.” “Mr. President” will do just fine.
Then how should we elect the president? Certainly we can’t just let the people vote! The people, even an all male electorate, were thought to be a rabble. Maybe Congress should elect him, the Founding Fathers said. But Congress might be too political, and may contain special interests and factions, so a second Congress was created, and it was called the Electoral College. And it has only
one job, electing a president.
And how would we elect the Elect