Democratic Deficit in the 2016 Presidential Election

My new novel Faithless Elector posits a genuine threat to the integrity of the presidential election.  Faithless Elector seizes the Zeitgeist surrounding the growing popular understanding of the contradictions in- and the fallibility of electing a president through the proxy of the Electoral College, an institution ripe for mischief.  The forthcoming election is getting stranger by the day, and the desperation of anti-Trump coalitions in both the Republican and Democratic parties makes them think and worry about the possible abuse of the Electoral College.

In just the last two weeks, Tim Dowling, in a column for the The Guardian on Feb. 25 (You Read It Here First) and Adam Philips, writing on March 16 for Huffington Post (Doomsday Savior?) both lay out competing nightmare scenarios for the upcoming presidential election.  In the cases noted above, and indeed in Faithless Elector, the issues are the democratic deficit at the heart of the Electoral College system--the fact that contrary to the United States bedrock notion of one-person: one-vote, we continue to roll the dice every four years, hoping there won't be a mistake of malfeasance.

Faithless Elector was conceived a number of years ago because the problem has always been there.  It is possible for the winner of the popular vote to lose the election (as happened most recently in the 2000 election between Bush and Gore), and there are ways to manipulate the Electoral College, which Faithless Elector lays bare.

Current writing on Faithless Electors and the Electoral College

Tim Dowling, The Guardian, Feb. 24.  "You read it here first" Adam Philips, HuffingtonPost, March 16.  Doomsday Savior? How Paul Ryan Will Pick the Next President Tyler Lewis, HuffPost, Jan. 21 Why We Should Abolish the EC Robert Alexander, CNN, Rogue Electors Threaten Election's Integrity