The Star - News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area

I read with interest a letter from Joe Bialek of Cleveland on changing the election process. He is an avowed Democrat and showed us a way to manipulate figures to show that the United States should drop the “winner take all” electoral college system of selecting a President.

His approach was to base selection on the percentage of votes no matter how many candidates. Essentially this would take electoral votes away from both of the ‘leaders” and give votes to candidates who didn’t have a chance to be elected. Therefore, this year

Mrs. Clinton would have won. In four years this could be reversed and then we could expect a new approach from Mr. Bialek to favor his candidates. Unfortunately, his approach would change how campaigns are conducted and not for the better. I say this as rather than attempting to win states, political activities would focus on “scoring percentage” and getting straw candidates on the ballot in strategic states.

I guess if you really want to manipulate results you should try my approach. That is, simply give each state one vote “winner take all.” The score here is 30 states for Trump and 20 states for Clinton. The District of Columbia could be used as a tie breaker, but it would always go Democrat as 93 percent voted for Hillary. For some reason, I doubt California and New York as well as a few other large states would go for it. I can see the stir it would cause as they tried to develop justification for rejecting the idea. Anyway, it beats Joe’s idea and is much simpler.

One shouldn’t take my suggestion seriously or Mr. Bialek’s either. Neither reflects what our forefathers dealt with which was selecting one president in light of State’s Rights and State Population. I for one think they did a great job.

Michael Palanuk

Spokane Valley