Opinion: Electoral college, go ahead and make Trump president

Good morning. I’m Paul Thornton, The Times’ letters editor, and it is Saturday, Dec. 17. For readers in Los Angeles, it’s been wet outside these past few days — but not wet enough over the last five years. Here’s a look back at the week in Opinion.

Since his election day victory more than a month ago, Donald Trump has provided no assurance that his impending presidency will not be the disaster that his belligerence during the campaign suggested it would be. He has continued to air his petty grievances on Twitter, recklessly showed no interest in determining the extent of Russian involvement in his victory and collected a Cabinet of billionaires and ideologues whose primary interest seems to be undermining the agencies they will lead.

Trump’s behavior has prompted his most worried critics to look to the electoral college for national salvation. Their hope is misplaced, as the electors on Monday will almost certainly ratify the Nov. 8 results — as they should, says the Trump-averse Times editorial board:

Trump is profoundly problematic as a potential president — unfit, inexperienced, irresponsible, just for starters — which is why this editorial page strenuously opposed his election. He trails Hillary Clinton by almost 3 million votes nationwide, which makes a mockery of his claim of a popular mandate and underscores the need for a constitutional amendment to abolish the electoral college and provide for the election of the president by a national popular vote. Highly disturbing evidence that Russian intelligence agencies intervened to help Trump and hurt Clinton casts a serious shadow over Trump’s victory, even if it was only one of many factors in the outcome.

But none of these considerations justifies upending the expectations of voters, Democratic as well as Republican, who chose these electors expecting them to support the nominee of their respective parties. …

This page believes that the electoral college is anachronistic and that the system should be changed so that the winner of the popular vote becomes president. That’s why we have supported both a constitutional amendment to abolish the electoral college and the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, an arrangement in which states pledge to award all their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the national popular vote. (California has joined the compact, but it won’t go into effect until it’s joined by enough states to comprise a majority of the electoral vote.)

But for better or worse — we think for worse — the 2016 election wasn’t conducted on the principle that the winner of the popular vote would become president. Both Clinton and Trump competed (and tailored their campaign strategies) to win electoral votes in what amounted to 51 separate statewide contests. They knew the rules from the start and it is too late now to change those rules without creating a free-for-all that would wreak havoc on the existing system. Any effort to claw back the election from Trump now would create a serious constitutional crisis.

Had Clinton won more electoral votes — even if she finished second in the popular vote — her supporters would have proclaimed victory and vociferously condemned any attempt to incite the electoral college to keep her out of the White House. Trump wasn’t our choice, and the prospect of him as president is deeply worrisome. But those who are trying to foment a revolt in the electoral college should focus their energies instead on preparing to oppose Trump’s policies after he takes office.

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The electoral college may be in the Constitution, but that doesn’t make it constitutional. Law professor Kenneth Jost says the undemocratic institution born out of America’s slaveholding past almost certainly violates the principal of “one person, one vote” and ought to be struck down in court. As for the small matter of the electoral college actually appearing in the Constitution: “That doesn’t necessarily make it constitutional. The framers ‘knew times can blind us to certain truths and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress,’ Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in nullifying anti-sodomy laws in Lawrence vs. Texas. ‘As the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom.’” L.A. Times

Mend it, because we can’t end it. Passing and ratifying a constitutional amendment to abolish the electoral college will not happen, so the next best option is a fix that works within the system, say Arnold Barnett and Edward Kaplan: Apportion electors proportionally according to each state’s popular vote, not by the current winner-take-all system present almost everywhere in the U.S. If electoral votes were determined this way, the authors write, Hillary Clinton would be our next president. L.A. Times

Vladimir Putin must be thrilled — his investment in cyberspying is paying off. Doyle McManus ticks off a wish list for the Russian president now that his preferred candidate will assume office on Jan. 20. Team Trump is still willfully, defiantly in denial about Russian meddling in the election, and that’s unacceptable, says The Times editorial board. Rex Tillerson could be a good secretary of State, but not in a Putin-friendly Trump administration, writes Max Boot. Readers call Trump the Russian president’s “most useful idiot.”

The siege of Aleppo, Syria, is a global disgrace for which no one will be punished. There’s plenty of blame to go around, primarily to the brutal Syrian President Bashar Assad and his forces, but also Russia (which intervened militarily on behalf of Assad), the immovable United Nations Security Council and the terrorist organization Islamic State. The only solution now is a political one, says The Times’ editorial board. L.A. Times

There’s too much parking in Los Angeles. Yes, you read that right, and if we plan to make progress on Southern California’s notorious traffic problem, planners must make driving less appealing by reducing the region’s abundance of parking. And abundance is the right word: “Decades of car-centric development in Los Angeles have resulted in more than three and a half parking spaces for every car in the county — nearly 19 million in total. These spaces — in residential garages and driveways, commercial parking structures and surface lots, and along streets — account for 200 square miles of real estate, much of it concentrated in dense, transit-friendly areas.” L.A. Times

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