Did you know that America is not a Democracy? We're actually a Republic. According to a very informative site, The U.S. Constitution Online, The Framers were wary of giving the people the power to directly elect the President - some felt the citizenry too beholden to local interests, too easily duped by promises or shenanigans, or simply because a national election, in the time of oil lamps and quill pens, was just impractical....The Electoral College, proposed by James Wilson, was the compromise that the Constitutional Convention reached. Wikipedia gives a great explanation of how it works as well as its history. According to Wikipedia,

The name Electoral College is not given in the United States Constitution, and it was not until the early 1800s that it came into general usage as the designation for the group of citizens selected to cast votes for President and Vice President. It was first written into Federal law in 1845, and today the term appears in 3 U.S.C. § 4, in the section heading and in the text as "college of electors."

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Why we need to make our votes count:

• Al Gore? Say no more? The people wanted him but between the problems with the Electoral College and those hanging chads, we were denied our right to elect our Commander in Chief.
• The inequality of delegates per state: I'm not sure how old this information is, but it claims that it takes 19 states to equal the voting power of California.
• Think of all the things we could vote for, for example we could vote that all orphaned American children have to be adopted before a couple is allowed to adopt one from another country. (Yes, I go into tears whenever I see those ads of overseas starving children, but as the flight attendants on aircraft say, "In the event of a loss of cabin pressure, first place an oxygen mask on your OWN face before attempting to help someone else.") America is in rough shape. We have to educate, feed, house and clothe our OWN children. We have to employ our OWN people, weed out corruption and incompetence in our OWN government, and get to the source of lowering crime: educating and nurturing our youngsters in supportive environments where they learn other ways to behave than breaking the law. Americans' tax dollars should not leave the country until we're back on our feet.
• I read somewhere that only between 50 and 60% of eligible voters vote. Think of what an increase there would be if people actually thought they had something to vote about?

Some cons:

• A recent study called What Americans Know: 1989-2007 from the Pew Research Center shows that the Framers of The Constitution might have had good reason for not wanting the people solely responsible for electing the President: It showed that the most highly knowledgable people (58%) among those interviewed get their news from The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and major newspaper websites, whereas the lowest percentage of highly knowledgeable people (34 and 35% respectively) get their news from daily morning shows and Fox News. The highest percentage of people with low knowledge (35 and 37% respectively) watch Fox News or read online news discussion blogs. But this could be remedied relatively quickly if we were allowed to vote that newspapers and politicians were to be held accountable for their lies, and put their retractions for their errors on the front page.   In my opinion, deliberately deceiving the American public about their health, safety and/or welfare is an Act of Treason and should be punished accordingly. Whether it's a newscaster's propaganda, the upper management of cigarette companies putting out "scientific reports" saying that cigarettes are harmless, or even the President...if it can be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was a deliberate deception as opposed to an error in judgment...off with his head! <semi-joking> If there were a publically funded national news channel that did nothing all day long but accurately and completely explain what's on our ballots and in our headlines, citizens might not feel so hopeless about trying to understand complex issues.
• Politicians will most likely fight us tooth and nail because it may take away most of their jobs and, more importantly, their power.
• There are some excellent "cons" clearly expressed on Wiki.Answers.com.

What can we do?

• Well obviously, we all need to begin watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report :) Although the statistics mentioned in the Pew study referenced above don't actually mention whether people who are more knowledgeable choose to watch those shows, or if they become more knowledgable from watching those shows, in my case, it's most certainly the latter. I knew diddly before Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, Keith Olbermann and Stephen Colbert.
• Write our Presidential candidates. If, after weighing the pros and cons, you believe as I do that the United States should become a TRUE Democracy, let Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and/or John McCain know NOW.

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