DETROIT, MI — The 2016 Presidential election has angered many American voters about the electoral college. The illusion that the public elects the president via popular voting for their candidate has been destroyed. Electors are chosen mainly at Democratic and Republican party conventions with the public having no voice in the matter. Both parties are influenced and controlled by the corporate class.
In addition, 24 states are not bound to honor the public vote. And, if no candidate receives the 270 majority, the House of Representatives and the Senate chooses the President and Vice President.
Voters feel that all this allows the 1% to determine elections.
The Electoral College was established in 1787 by the rulers in order to subvert the will of the people. The facade of democracy was instituted through voting. However, Native Americans, African Americans, women and all whites who did not own taxed property were excluded. African American votes were counted as 3/5ths for the southern Slavocracy. Therefore the voting crowd was safely in the hands of the Southern Slavocracy and the rising banking/industrialist North. After the Civil War, the victorious North instituted the right to vote for African American males as a means to exert economic and political control over the former slaves.
As the robotic/computer technology spread in the 1970s, eliminating jobs for millions, voting of an increasingly impoverished and propertyless mass became a hazard for the ruling class. The ruling class needs to contain the struggle of the dispossessed for democracy by using a fascist agenda. Increasingly, restrictions on voting have been instituted. In Michigan, Emergency Management, a new form of ruling class power that throws out elected officials and ignores the public wishes in favor of the corporate quest for profits was put into place.
In the recent election, the growing disaffection of the people was apparent. About 132 million voted and some 100 million did not vote. Within this context, the election of Trump by the Rust Belt and Appalachia (areas voting for Obama in 2008 and 2012) showed the hurt and need in the country. Fortunately, many of the dispossessed are not buying the lies of either party and this is the segment we must win to the vision of co-operative society. In such a society, the massive technology is owned and run for the benefit of the people. We must get united and not let the ruling class divide us along race or gender with their hysterical propaganda.
What we do in America will affect the struggle of the dispossessed throughout the globe.