It Ain’t Over Until the Fat Lady Sings

“This is no way to run a country,” said Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, complaining about the stalled election. The Constitutional process, the Electoral College, makes it possible for a candidate to win a majority of the states’ votes and win, even if he didn’t win a majority of the popular vote. Durbin therefore plans to introduce a Constitutional amendment to do away with the process. Such an amendment will have a tough time passing: at least 700 previous attempts have failed. But ordinary citizens are less worried about the process. “That is democracy. That is how it works. That’s how it should work,” says a business owner in Detroit, Mich. “Because of this, I think people are noticing how much their vote means,” said a Richmond, Va., stockbroker. And a student in Missouri: “We may question a person’s abilities. We may question a person’s ideology. But in the end, we say, ‘These are the rules.’ That’s how we play the game.” (AP, 2) ...It figures that citizens pay more attention in civics class than the people they elect.