DJ Tice got an op-ed item published in Strib.
Will Bunch got one published in Philly Inquirer.
The Strib footer:
D.J. Tice is a retired commentary editor and an opinion columnist for the Star Tribune. He also served seven years as political news editor. He has written extensively about Minnesota and American politics and history, economics and legal affairs.
The Inquirer footer:
I'm the national columnist — with some strong opinions about what's happening in America around social injustice, income inequality and the government.
So, two newspaper guru types. And now, why Tice's vote for Trump (a sound assumption based on editorial history) should have the gravitas of Bunch's Harris vote (you read, you know his leaning).
THAT, IN THEORY, IS THE QUESTION.
Favoring Harris, agreeing with the mood of what Bunch wrote about Trump, why am I favoring the equivalence in gravitas as being as stated?
Simply because I want my vote in Minnesota, which statewide has been blue forever since the Pawlenty mistake to have a national impact equivalent to one person's Pennsylvania vote. Each equal in deciding an ultimate Presidential election outcome.
Because Pennsylvania is a swing state and Minnesota not, they get disproportinate attention. They have a "bigger" say.
Tice is too verbose to quote except for his main point in defense of the electoral collage superstructure over popular voting:
Consider this: In 2016, Hillary Clinton famously won the nationwide popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, but lost the election to Donald Trump in the Electoral College, doing much to enflame American progressives’ distaste for the college. What’s worth noting is that Clinton’s popular vote margin that year within the borders of California was well over 4 million votes. In short, outside California, Trump won the popular vote across 49 states.
I did not vote for either then, going Dem down ticket, but third party at the top because of how Clinton took Goldman Sachs money and how the two Clinton terms were in my retrospective view bad for party and nation.
So sink California and its population in the Pacific Ocean and then Trump would have in 2016 had both a popular majority and a majority of electors, instead of one but not the other. So what? Big deal. He got the spoils.
My bottom line is they give me one stinking little vote, they give each voting Pennsylvanian the same one vote.
But because it's a swing state, his/her one vote matters more than mine, in the Sweepstakes, (even with mine preeminent in my own mind). At least make mine of equal consequence.
At least give me a parity.
Count the popular vote as decisive, and I'd be happier.
Things will take much pressure to rid us of the Constitutional present elector system, because the Dakotas and Wyoming like things as is, but I still want full vote parity with anybody else, anywhere in the blessed federal nation.
It's only fair (Fairness being something Tice suggested in his "reasoning").
We are a nation of equal people. Never mind in 1789 political compromises were made then to get the Constitution approved per rules, then. Those compromises now are as irrelevant as the horse trading that went on back then, a/k/a "original intent."
Original intent was that only propertied white men voted, subject to a poll tax and literacy test, and for head count a slave counted 3/5 of a white voter, women counted as a full person as did children, but neither had a vote, then. Much of that was changed, but elector BS remains.
It is antiquated, it is an impediment to one voter, one equal AND equivalent vote, and besides all else,
The electoral college, I don't like it. End of story.
(Minds can disagree. I concede that.)