Dear Electoral College, it's time for a change

Okay, electoral college, it's time we had a talk.

Now, I understand that you were created back when people had to ride around in fancy-pants horsedrawn carriages to vote, and that for most people getting to the polls would be the equivalent of me driving to Brazil with a really gassy friend.

So it sort of made sense back then to have delegates. Probably it even made sense to have "superdelegates." I don't understand what they are, but I believe they may be delegates with x-ray vision or super-long tongues or something. Either way, I'm sure they were useful back when Jesus came up with this voting thing in the 12th century.

Since I'm an expert on all matters political, let me put the whole voting process into layman's terms for everyone.

• Step 1: Go to your polling place (look for a school with a bunch of jerks standing around outside it waving signs).
• Step 2: Either vote with a machine that will eat your ballot or do that weird caucus square dance thing that nobody on the face of the planet understands.
• Step 3: Wait around awhile to see who wins / watch the returns on tv / go get drunk.
• Step 4: Cheer if your candidate got the most votes, otherwise kind of mope around.
• Step 5: Realize that you weren't actually voting for a candidate, you were voting to tell some delegate douchebag who to vote for in some secret election you're not invited to.
• Step 6: Ponder why the person with the most votes has fewer delegates than the person with the second-most votes. Maybe blame the Illuminati.
• Step 7: Have some smartass tell you that America is a "constitutional republic" and not the silly "democracy" your civics teacher talked about.
• Step 8: Say "oh to hell with this stupid country" and move to the Netherlands, where they let you smoke pot.

Sure, it's a simple process. And, as I've said repeatedly it probably made sense back in 1066.

But times have changed! The Norman invasion is over! Nowadays we have cars and velocipedes and iGoogles! Time for a new system!

So here's my proposal...

Let's get rid of all the delegates and the electoral college and all that shit. Let's just vote for who we want to win, and whoever gets the most votes can be the winner! We could even do Instant Runoff Voting so we could maybe skip the whole stupid primary system!

And let's all do it at the same time so that the news media can't bore us to tears for two fucking years ahead of time, and so that people in states that don't vote first actually can feel like they did something.

And let's not do it on a stupid Tuesday! Let's have the polls open for a whole week, 24 hours a day! That way everyone who wants to vote can do it when they want to do it. Even vampires and people with shitty jobs. Keep reporters and pollsters away with razorwire fences so they can't do entry/exit polling and ruin things for the later voters.

Also, give people cookies after they vote. This is what blood drives do, and it works for them. Voter turnout would be great! Plus it would attract hobos, and it would be fun watching the candidates compete for the cherished hobo vote.

If we could just implement those little minor changes we'd finally have the vibrant, people-driven democracy we deserve. So, get to it Electoral College!

Love,
Mr. Unicow