Inspired by the results of at least two recent elections, Melissa has an idea to help the United States better pick its top representative leader.
Listen to Melissa’s submission featured in Episode 40 of How Cool Is This? and read a transcript of the full episode below:
Melissa: My idea is to get rid of the electoral college. I think the electoral vote should determine the President. We never would have had Donald Trump or George W. Bush. I think the Electoral College is an outdated form of election rules.
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Nick: Brian, how cool is the Electoral College?
Brian: The Electoral College is not cool, and people who vote in the Electoral College are not cool either.
Nick: Yeah, that's not a path that I necessarily want my life to go down. I was always under the assumption, and maybe this is just my naïveté, that my vote mattered in a democracy. But, when we have a system like the Electoral College, that doesn't seem to be the case.
Brian: Having your vote matter, having your opinions and thoughts affect decisions, is cool.
Nick: It's cool to feel heard. It's also cool to be civically engaged.
Brian: But If you're too civically engaged, a lot of people will think you're just not that cool. And that's something you have to own if you want to make real change in the world.
Nick: Sometimes getting the power necessary to enact change is not very cool.
Brian: And is very isolating.
Nick: So Melissa thinks that we should replace the Electoral College with the popular vote. Is the popular vote more cool?
Brian: The popular vote is cooler than the Electoral College.
Nick: I think it's cool just because it makes a lot more sense. You just count up how many people said yes. I want this person to be the president, and that's it.
Brian: Yeah, over-complicating situations and events is not cool. Making things simpler is cool.
Nick: Were the Founding Fathers who instituted this situation not cool?
Brian: They were really cool at the time. but if you dropped those people into 2020 they would not be very cool.
Nick: Sometimes things that were cool once are not always cool.
Brian: Having electors was cool when we didn't have communication systems structured for everybody to have a voice, but now that we do, perhaps it's time to reevaluate how we're representing ourselves.
Nick: Do you think Melissa would want to get rid of the Electoral College if the Electoral College had helped elect the person that she wanted to be President? Because it seems to me like this idea stems from the election of one, maybe two people.
Brian: It would be easy to overlook the obvious problem if it were in your favor — in any situation.
Nick: Things that are uncool, like the Electoral College, can be cool if they work in your favor. It’s a little complicated.
Brian: I think most people who preferred Hillary Clinton would have been OK with it had she won.
Nick: When the system doesn't work for you, it's uncool. But when the system does work, does that make the system cool or just the situation?
Brian: It's possible that "coolness is fluid and people use it to describe things without any real consistency.
Nick: You know, that makes our job as host of this podcast incredibly difficult.
Brian: Considering that coolness evolves overtime, is there any way that this podcast can truly achieve its goal, which is to determine… how cool this is?
Nick: This is a record of this specific time. 10, 15, 1000 years from now, we might look back and say, ‘You know what? The Electoral College was the coolest thing of all time.’ We just don't know.
Brian: It would be uncool of us to overthink this.
Nick: Which is why I think we should take a step back and remind ourselves that the Electoral College it's just not a very cool way to elect someone to an important position.
Brian: What do you think about the argument that people are stupid and don't know what's best for them?
Nick: I think that's a very compelling argument, but at the end of the day, while it is uncool to be stupid, I don't think you can put in an uncool system just to make sure that stupid people don't have a voice either. That's just not fair.
Brian: It's cooler to be stupid then to think you're smarter than someone.
Nick: That's very true.
Brian: Do you think that brands should be able to run for president?
Nick: You mean the amorphous, intangible entity of a brand should be able to run for President?
Brian: Sure.
Nick: I mean, why not? If corporations are people, brands can be elected officials.
Brian: Politicians are brands. They have teams of people who craft their images, craft their policies. Why does it have to be a person? Why can't it be a brand?
Nick: If Goodyear were the president, we have a good year.
Brian: I think I would want to vote for McDonald's.
Nick: Not a bad vote. Good fries.
For more information on the history and context of this subject, especially some rather uncool aspects of it, consider reading The Atlantic’s article “The Electoral College’s Racist Origins” shared in November 2019.
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