It has been just over 12 years now since Bush defeated Gore in an election that will forever be remembered as an International Embarrassment.

The obvious question for many Americans is, “Why has nothing changed since that fateful day of humiliation?”

Have you ever really thought about what the rest of the world was thinking? Here we have a country that labels itself as “Defenders of Democracy” and the people are not even allowed to select their own president. Excuse my French, but… Fuck the constitution. It needs to be changed. What’s right is right and what’s not right is wrong. Al Gore should have been president. Everyone with a conscience knows it. I was a proud conservative at that time and I still knew it. I feel that election was a lot like the O.J. Simpson trial. Most seemed to know that O.J. was guilty but we just accepted that the system was corrupt and moved on. Why do we continue to have to accept that our system is corrupt?

There have been polls abound on this issue and they all tend to reflect the same thing… The Average American is for Abolishing the Electoral College.

I’ve read numbers as high as 75% for abolishing it. Do some research and you will find the same thing. Most people want it gone.

At the very least I think people would love to see it “fixed.” So why is it that the states of Nebraska and Maine are the only two states that allow for a “split electorate?” Why aren’t the other 48 states interested in the same thing?

We will get to that in a moment but it’s money. It always is. It’s just money.

OK, so if candidate A wins Texas by 50.1% to 49.9%, he or she gets all 34 of those Texas electoral votes. It’s not 18 to 16 or something that is practical. It’s winner take all!!! WTF? This is exactly how Gore lost. Gore was unlucky enough to win lesser states by huge margins and lost key states by smaller margins. In the end he had more votes than Bush, and he lost? How in the hell can we let this happen? This is supposed to be a country that prides itself on doing what is right.

You don’t do what’s right when it’s convenient, you do it all of the time. The biggest embarrassment of this situation is that 12 years have since past and we have done nothing to fix it. It took the story only a couple of months to vanish and not one of our duly elected representatives was concerned enough to get something done about this travesty.

People that say, “My vote doesn’t count” are often labeled as negative outlets who don’t believe in our wonderfully democratic system. To the contrary these people know what the hell is going on and would love to see a change. But they won’t sugarcoat a turd and call it candy. They are realists and know that the system is broken and needs to be fixed.

So I said it’s about money, and it always is. Do you want to hear my take? It’s pretty simple but I believe that if you look at it, you will see it’s pretty obvious.

I thought it was totally fucking disrespectful to watch the 2012 campaign. Obama was given credit as a master strategist who knew how to use the electoral map to get elected. I will grant that his team was good at this. But when he and Romney made stop after stop in “battleground” states and ignored most of the country I thought it was a slap in the face of the American voters. It was more obvious than ever that the candidates were either “conceding” certain states or just totally apathetic toward smaller electoral states.

Say, for instance, in 2016, that Wyoming is a dead heat… this is just a hypothetical. Neither candidate will likely care. Why? Because 3 measly electoral votes isn’t as important to chase as those 27 electoral votes in Florida. A candidate down by 5% in Florida is more likely to campaign there than if he is down by 1% in Wyoming. It’s “winner take all” remember, and it’s about money and power. Fuck Wyoming, let’s get Florida turned around. That is where the majority of their energy and campaign money will flow. It’s also why states like Florida and Texas and California would never stand for a change in the electoral system. They are making too much money from it.

States with big electoral counts love it. Why? More campaign stops and more news coverage means more money. It means tourism money if nothing else. Don’t think for a minute that a stop in Ohio by a presidential candidate won’t bring followers from 700-800 miles away to Ohio. Ohio loves having 20 electoral votes. It means advertising money to papers and television stations. It means hotel reservations, It means more Big Macs sold on the campaign trail. It’s about network dollars and campaign contributions. It might even mean more Craigslist prostitutes being summoned, but that’s another story that has already been covered on other blogs.

The other reason it will never change is the exact thing we heard in the news. Obama’s team was genius. They knew where to put their efforts and when to do it. Candidates don’t have to fight tooth and nail over undecided voters in the small town of Hyder, AK when they can fight over a huge constituency in Cuyahoga County in Cleveland. Oh, I know…Cuyahoga is a bad example since it always votes democrat. Let’s just say the state of Ohio in general. It’s more important to fight over Ohio than it is to fight for Alaska. How does that make the average family of 4, with 8 mush dogs, and an igloo feel? My bad, not all people in Alaska have mush dogs. 😉

The point is that the big campaign money can be spent in a more effective way when candidates are allowed to follow a strategic electorate map. The guy in Alaska will still feel the effects of the election, but the people in Cleveland may be speaking for him. Does his vote count? Yes and no. It counts only to the extent that it determines the state of Alaska. It doesn’t matter if Alaska is carried by one vote or 100,000…it’s still worth 3 electorates. And if it is carried by 100,000…99,999 votes do not get applied elsewhere. That’s why Gore lost and it is wrong.

It’s insane and it’s about money. Why did Al Gore go away so gracefully? Have you ever wondered that? This man was the choice of the American people to be our next president and he went away with only a few whimpers. What kind of fucking leadership is that?

Some would say it was his class and belief in our system. I say that’s bullshit. I would love to have heard the conversations with his party peers after that election. I will call myself a liberal democrat for just a second here and tell you what any money-grubbing, power-hungry, constituent-enslaving politician would have said.

“Al don’t you fucking rock the boat. This system is not perfect but the future of the party depends on you walking away right now. The system works and we can’t afford for people to question it.”

My best guess is that the corrupt two-party system knows that the status quo can not be questioned. The Democrats agreed it was better to lose one battle than to risk losing the whole war. They like the system because of all of the money and power it affords them.

Do I have a bad attitude? Maybe. But I am tired of being embarrassed by people who obviously don’t give a shit what you and I think. They throw new political spins at us so quickly that we forget what we were angry about yesterday.

Not me. I still haven’t forgotten that the world laughed at us in the year 2000 and they are still laughing. Abolish the Electoral College. Every vote should count. Voters in the state of Hawaii should not feel like they are wasting their time because the election has already been called by all of the major networks. It’s fucking stupid and everyone knows it.

Disagree? I’d love to hear your take.