Christians and the Electoral College
I’ve had a few weeks to think about the Electoral College.
My candidate for U.S. President, Hillary Clinton, won the nationwide popular election by almost 3 million votes. Donald Trump, however, won the Electoral College.
According to the U.S. Constitution, that makes Trump the winner.
This is the second time in my lifetime that a candidate won the popular vote and lost the election. Like Hillary Clinton, Al Gore won the nationwide popular vote in 2000, but lost the Electoral College to George W. Bush.
Out of the five presidential elections in the 21st century, the Electoral College gave the popular vote loser the White House in two of them.
No wonder people say the Electoral College is a threat to democracy.
I choose to look at it this way: The Electoral College would be a threat if democracy was the primary aim of the United States.
It is not.
The primary aim of the United States is “liberty and justice for all.”
Democracy is not the end; it’s the means to the end. The end is the preservation and protection of human rights inclusive of everyone.
In the United States, our founders believed the most basic and important right is the right to self-expression. Close behind are the rights to be heard, to organize, to stand and defend. The U.S. Constitution designs a government that exists to defend these God-given rights for every citizen, but most especially minorities.
Our founders’ chief aim was to make a government in which elected officials would defend the rights of the very people who voted against them. The founders knew human nature–the corruption of power; so they designed a government that is bumbling, dysfunctional, herky-jerky, inefficient, and just plain weird compared to other governments. Why? To keep our government from crushing dissenting voices, minorities, and outliers.
That is of the utmost importance and urgency in a country like ours–a country that is made of minorities–ethnic, political, racial, religious, socio-economic, sexual, and so on.
The Electoral College–for better or worse–empowers the minority in our country. It is a big stick for those on the short end of the stick.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been studying Trump voters to de-sensationalize them as much as I can. The “circus show voters”–the bigots who were demonstrative in their support for Trump–got most of the attention from the media. Most Trump voters, however, remind me of the folks from my hometown of Ashland, Ohio. They’re blue collar, down-home, hard-working, and traditional people who are afraid of being pushed down and out of their own country by hoity-toity city liberals like me. Evidence shows that over the last few years, these voters felt more and more like their voices and their votes didn’t count for anything. Hillary Clinton fit their profile of the elitist career politician who dismissed them as “deplorables.”
I only met a few voters who were enthusiastic about Trump in 2016. Many of my Trump friends–church-going, family-loving, hard-working Midwesterners like the folks in Ashland–voted for him while pinching their noses.
Why? As a censure and protest against the government establishment they felt so strongly had begun to work against them.
I’m deeply sorry that Donald Trump won and I’ll leave it at that.
I’m very glad to live in a country in which institutions like the Electoral College guarantee such power to the minority. “Liberty and justice for all.”
A final three points for my fellow Christians:
Point #1: God did not author the U.S. Constitution. When God set out to redeem humanity, he did not appoint a country or human government to do it. The United States is neither appointed nor ordained to save humanity. The Unites States is not the “city on a hill” or the “light of the world.” It is a human nation-state and we all know the depravity of humans. Let’s get real about our expectations and where we put our hope.
Point #2: Jesus Christ is how God is redeeming humanity. The Christ necessarily stands far apart from the governments and nation-states of the world. He is above their laws. He owes them nothing. He pledges allegiance to none of them. His crucifixion proved the inherent corruption of all human governments. His resurrection proved their inadequacy and incompetence while proving the inevitability of his own lordship.
Point #3: Jesus Christ is most concerned with minorities. Read his mission statement in the Gospel of Luke 4.18-19. He got it straight from the Book of Isaiah 61.1-2. Read the laws God created for the new nation of Israel when he brought them out of Egypt. God’s chief concern has always been that those who have give to those who don’t have; that those in power use it to empower those who are powerless; that those who have a voice use it to speak for those who don’t have a voice. Our calling as Christians is to be proactive and strong in our advocacy, solidarity with, and support for those in the minority. It is not winning that makes us a “city on a hill,” “light of the world,” and “salt of the earth”; it is standing among those who are “losing” that makes us worthy to wear the name of Christ.
Governments may fail to protect dissenters and minorities, but the kingdom of God must not.
The election is over and the Electoral College did what it was meant to do.
The question now is: Will Christians do what we are meant to do?