According to the non-partisan Cook Political Report tabulation, Hillary R. Clinton won the popular vote by 2,864,974 ballots, with a final tally of 65,844,610 versus Donald J. Trump’s tally of 62,979,636 ballots. Some 7,804,213 lost souls opted to cast a ballot for someone other than Clinton or Trump.

…and when the Electoral College results were tallied on December 19th, seven idiots, a.k.a. “faithless electors”, cast their ballots for someone other than the candidate they were supposed to. Trump secured 304 votes and Clinton secured 232 votes, with two defecting from the Trump camp and five from the Clinton camp.

In effect, we’re sending an incredibly unqualified person to the White House, and this in spite of losing the popular vote by roughly the size of Chicago, the third most populated city in the country, (based on 2015 figures).

OK, OK, enough of the statistics…

Simply stated, it’s time for the Electoral College to go away. Yes, that’s right , dismantle it. Remove this ridiculous 18th century artifact from the presidential election process, and do it now! The 21st century voter in the United States has ready access to information about each and every candidate on the ballot, and with nominal effort, can monitor election results in near-real-time on Election Day. Sure, a candidate can still hoodwink voters – the 2016 results pretty much prove that point – but don’t think the Electoral College will “protect” the populous from itself, even for a minute. It never has. It never will. The risk of widespread voter fraud – despite the gallons of ink spilled on this topic in the months leading up to, (and the weeks trailing away from), every election cycle – is minuscule, thus negating another of the more frequently-cited justifications for preserving the Electoral College.

If the 2000 election cycle and the 2016 election cycle have taught us anything, it’s the Electoral College is completely unnecessary today. It perverts our democracy. The will of the people – as expressed by the the popular vote – should be respected, and yet it is not. The United States ended up occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, (with disastrous consequences), as a result of George W. Bush becoming President in 2000. Yup, he lost the popular vote too, (albeit not by the margin Trump did), and look at what happened on his watch!

…dot com “bubble” burst. September 11th, 2001. Financial “meltdown”. Housing “bubble” burst. 10% unemployment nationally.

C’mon people, this stuff didn’t happen while Barack H. Obama was in office – he inherited this heaping pile of sh*t from an administration headed up by someone who looks like a f*cking genius compared to Trump! What I find most worrisome is virtually all of the deftly-managed responses executed by the Obama administration over the course of the past 8 years are now threatened by the most singularly unqualified person ever elected to hold the office of the President of the United States. Yikes!

…and the list of appointees the President-elect proffered is just as lamentable as the outcome of the Electoral College vote on December 19th – either an appointee for a given agency has no relevant experience whatsoever, or they’ve expressed disdain – dare I say disgust – for the very agency they’ve been tapped to lead – double yikes!