So I took a month off from the website, focusing my attention on, oh, little things like schoolwork. But I’m back now (with a redesigned site! yipee!) figuring that there’s just not enough commentators talking about the election results. There’s a clear need for my voice to be added to the cacophony – if for no other reason then I stayed up ‘til 3 fricken a.m. listening to everyone else blather.

First, the full disclosure part (a la Slate): I didn’t vote for either of the two main party suits. Having quite foolishly changed my registration from Florida to New York when I moved here, it didn’t matter who I gave my nod to for president, leading me to waste it on a third-party candidate. (If you guess which one, you get a lollipop …)

That being said …

I don’t understand the calls to abolish the Electoral College. Sure, I can fathom somebody wanting to change the system for the next election (they’d be wrong, of course, as I explain below), but everybody went into Tuesday’s contest knowing how the race would be run. To now say, ‘oops, the electoral vote and the popular vote are different; let’s go with the masses’ is insane, unconstitutional and wrong.

As would, of course, going with the masses in future elections.

Forget whatever reasons the Founding Fathers had for coming up with the Electoral College. We should keep it now for two reasons: we’re a republic, not a democracy; and we’re a collection of states, not a monolithic body

Somebody (Lazarus Long, perhaps?) once said that a monarchy is one man saying he’s smarter than everybody in the country, while a democracy is everybody saying they’re smarter than everybody else. The idea of a republic is to corral the excesses of such a system through representation, rather than letting the largest mob run things. In this case, the representation is done through the states: as citizens of a state, we decide who wants to be president, and then, as a state, we cast our ballots.

Which leads to the next reason to Keep the Kollege (coming soon to a bumper sticker near you.): Despite the outcome of the Civil War, the U.S. is still a collection of states, not just a national group of people. The Electoral College provides a check on the populations of the larger states running everything while also insuring that state and regional issues gain national importance. One of the reasons Social Security reform was such an issue in the election was because of Florida’s importance

Without the College, the election will come down to a fight over the New York-Washington Corridor and California, cutting the smaller and more rural states out of the picture entirely. Sure, some states – such as New York – are entirely ignored by campaigners now. But that’s because the voters have already made up their minds, not because their minds don’t matter.

Oh, and one last note: as much as people might complain about American politics, you have to give the citizens and the systems some respect. As the television stations flipped back and forth on the results, viewers eventually headed to bed instead of taking to the streets. Whoever ends up losing is sure to complain – but for the 43rd time, the nation will see power peacefully slip from one leader to another.

That’s a good thing.