Electoral college a throwback to Holy Roman Empire

The electoral college is not just a remnant of our history, but is an adaptation from history that kept the anachronism of the Holy Roman Empire in existence for centuries. The aforementioned was said to be neither holy nor Roman.

The electors of the Roman empire were privileged, hereditary aristocrats that attempted to hold sway over the governance of highly diverse states and principalities. As long as we keep the electoral college in place we will be in danger of being neither a republic or a democracy. Already the electoral college has handed us a president elected by the minority of voters twice in my lifetime. The electoral college was set up as a way of accommodating the dichotomy of declaring that all men are created equal, while inviting slave holding states to participate in our union by granting them a little more leverage.

Although there is a significant portion of the population that still ascribes to the attitudes that led to the forceful European colonization of the continent (i.e. The Federalist Society) slavery itself has been abolished. Let us now abolish the electoral college.

Thomas J. Munyon

Marysville