HOW ABOUT A REAL ELECTORATE?

The Electoral College meets tomorrow to cast the final, telling, vote deciding america's presidency.  As with most 18th Century manifestations, the college has devolved into both a puzzle to the simple and a tool of the devious.  It seems anachronistic to most of us as we are creatures of the new dispensation of popular mass democracy.  An institution designed specifically to attenuate popular power can't really be justified within the way we are all supposed to think now. So let's not think as we ought but consider the reasoning of the founders and suggest a revivification of the original concept.


The founders  were on record as agreeing with the Greco-Roman tradition of deep suspicion of direct Democracy.  Yet, they were of a mind that the government served no aim other than to effect the interests of those governed.  This is the age-old tragic tension between fairness and efficiency within all human systems  A government for the people that does not reflect their participation soon becomes an unaccountable bureaucracy with a distinct culture and drives of its own.  A government directly of the people will have no better judgment our discernment than any random collection of people, and with their susceptibility to the manipulation of demagogues.   

The founders we're also mindful of what mobs of "The people" were like.  There was much disorder under the Articles of Confederation.  The atrocities of the French Revolution left no doubt about popular assemblies passion for tyrannical and mercurial mayhem.  

Seeing this, and instructed by the history of Athens and Rome, they sought to create a system that operated within an orderly framework that respected procedural safeguards against democratic majoritarian excess.  

By the 21st Century the franchise has been extended beyond any hope of recalling back to the responsible element of the citizenry.  People with no learning and no personal property or accomplishment vote.  People who live off the public fisc vote themselves raises from the pockets of productive fellow citizens.  One party connives to import people into the country for the sole purpose of creating a captive voting block to further bankrupt the established  citizenry.  

The Democratic Party, having cajoled, purchased and fraudulently obtained the popular vote from the classes of described above, now want the the very thing they claimed to be against the day before yesterday.  They want the Electoral College to assert it's semi-aristocratic role as checkmate, and refuse to elect the man they are pledged to elect, Donald Trump.


I suggest that we take them up on this and  rejigger the whole mechanism.  Let's get rid of the popular vote altogether.  That way the people in their wisdom would vote not for President, but for Electors who reflect their own interests and mentalities.  Then, the Electors themselves using their best judgment as to whom to select as the President who reflectes their joint wisdom.  

Of course these Electors would have to meet certain criteria.  Would it be too much to suggest a few?

No Lawyers
No government employees 
No dual citizens
No tenured faculty
No persons without visible, honorable means of support.
No draft dodgers or persons who have not served in some capacity of service to the public.
No Elector would be eligible for public office after having served.
No journalists,  actors,  pimps, lobbyists or other undesirables as to be determined.
No newcomers, Electors would have to be descendants of the third generation at least.   

Thus would  we create a body of citizens who stand before their fellow citizens as guarantors of both order and liberty.  They would come to represent a cadre of superior citizens and should be subject to both enhanced scrutiny and marks of esteem, rather like the the French Legion of Merit.