Michael

Man, would I like to spend more time on your last post. You bring up some interesting points. But spare time is not my friend.

First, I would like to apologize. Your post is the first I’ve seen in Medium that allows interspersed comments. Convenient, but I don’t know how to do that here.

Back to that hockey analogy, the rules are quite clear that the winner of Game 7 gets the Stanley Cup. I can’t see the referees or other officials looking at previous games to determine the winner. Maybe a better example is the World Cup of Soccer. There are rules to qualify to represent the nations for not all nations can compete in the World Cup. And then there are rules to advance to the knockout stage. A 2-win-1-loss record in the group round might not cause an advance; but a 1–2 record in another group might. I believe there is a whole bunch of rules, written well in advance, to determine which of the 1–2's move on. Once past that group round, then it becomes a clear winner-take-all to advance. (But, of course, the game is sometimes affected by how much extra time the referee gives at the end of the match, but that is another discussion. )

I don’t consider a 51 to 49 victory a rounding victory. Lots of factors can affect an election, like Mr. Comey dumping the news of 30,000 emails a week before the election. I bet that caused enough soft D supporters to stay home on election day and give Mr. Trump the victory. Our elections — and the ultimate direction society takes for at least the short term — should not be decided on some fickle event.

You disparage the EC as some outdated 18th century invention. I agree. But the whole concept of western democracy is outdated. It’s time to replace the Model A for something better.

And this brings me to my ulterior motive for being on Medium. To move democracy forward, we need to abandon the political parties. It is time to base our votes on good character and capacity for governance.

Neither Mr. Trump or Ms. Clinton would rise very high in this system.