Dear Editor,
Trump’s reign of incompetence, racial and political divisiveness has come to an end. He almost succeeded in ruining the greatest democracy ever to exist. He didn’t do it by himself, there is plenty of blame to go around.
The notion the election was fraudulent or stolen is not without merit however. It does have basis in factual events, based on true provable occurrences. Therefore it is easy to understand beliefs held by many on the right, veracity in the lie perpetuated by Trump of a stolen election. Historically there have been five instances where the popular vote did not determine the president elect; J. Adams, Harrison, Hayes, G. Bush and Trump. Interestingly all Republicans!
The election of 2016 is a case in point. Hillary Clinton garnered some three million more votes than Trump, yet she did not win. One can only hypothetically surmise, had a black candidate won the 2020 election, what the January 6th insurrection would have become. It is also intriguing to speculate if Hillary had actually been installed would the coup have even been attempted?
Perhaps it is time to consider dumping the Electoral College for the true popular vote. While we are at it we should seriously consider adopting term limits.
We have Arizona politicians who need to answer some questions about their recent actions and statements. Gosar, Biggs, Lesko and Finchem all seem to think the election was rigged. If the ballots still exist, perhaps they should be tasked with re-counting all the votes themselves, with proper supervision of course!
I can’t help but think, Trump and his obedient minions just may have fractured the Republican Party so severely that repair is inconceivable. It is possible they are so splintered they can never totally agree on one candidate again.
Lloyd Dickson
Seligman
You are correct, it is time to abolish the electoral college. Only in the United States, and only for President, can a popular vote loser get installed. As un-democraric as you can get. The electoral college is a slave era, political compromised system. However, some small corrections, John Adams in 1796, if that is the Adams to which you refer, won the popular vote, and he was a not a Republican in today’s sense. The Republicans did not exist then. If you mean John Quincy Adams of 1824, he was elected by the House of Representatives, and its true he did not win the popular vote, nor the electoral college vote. But again, he was not a Republican in today’s sense. The party did not exist yet in 1824.