Letter: Correction needed on electoral votes

As many know, we do not have a federal democracy, rather a democratic republic.

The difference being we do not vote directly for president of the United States but for electors to do so as part of the Electoral College. It is made up of 438 electors who equate to the members of Congress and 100 which equate to the members of Senate.

In principle, their votes represent the voting opinions of those state citizens they represent. But that isn't true in 48 of the 50 states. In these 48 states, the candidate for president gets 100% of all electoral votes the state has. So in Illinois, as an example, all 19 electoral votes go to the candidate with a majority of the popular vote in Illinois.

But in reality, in six of the congressional districts which the elector represents in the past election, the other candidate won. And so, this is not in fact how a democratic republic is supposed to act. Only Nebraska and Maine conduct their electoral votes properly.

Why is this that way? When the original constitutional process was conducted, there simply wasn't the capability to process the voting reliably or timely enough to get it done. As a result, the process was given to the states to organize.

We have long since passed the point of getting this process done correctly. It is time that Washington move us toward a true democratic republic.

This would do more than get it right, it would minimize the constant controversies with election results as an entire state's votes would not be at risk. In the last election, three states are still under controversy, which would not be the case if this were corrected.

Richard Francke

Bartlett