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VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor Y ou’ve heard the phrase “letting the tail wag the dog” right? You know, like a situation in which an important or powerful entity is being controlled by someone or something that is much less important or powerful.

Well, right now, our country is a very big dog being wagged by not one but seven tails (which I know evokes a weird image but I promise I’m going somewhere with this).

Yes, our country, the nation of PaNvAzWiNcMiGa. No, I didn’t just have a stroke or anything. That amalgamation of letters are actually from the abbreviations for the seven swing states that will decide the upcoming 2024 Presidential Election.

They are: Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Michigan and Georgia. Sure, theoretically, all 50 states are “in play” as Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump seek to carve out the necessary 270 electoral votes needed to secure the presidency. And yes, there are other states, like Florida New Mexico and Iowa with wildly fluctuating polls that might surprise everyone and suddenly buck the polling trends there, but let’s face it. These seven swing states are the real make-or-break states that Harris and Trump will have to find a winning combination for in order to get the 270 votes they need.

And as a result, the rest of us are kind of an afterthought. Trump isn’t campaigning in Arkansas. He doesn’t need to. He’s going to win the state by 20 points. Harris isn’t campaigning here either. It would be a waste of time. You won’t see J.D. Vance out in California hyping up MAGA voters there, and Tim Walz isn’t making any stops in Illinois to rally the True Blue voters.

Something doesn’t seem quite right about this, does it? Now, if you want to look on the brights side, thankfully, at least, our status as not only a super-red state that is already in the bag for Trump, and one that only offers a measly 6 electoral votes, means we’re not being as bombarded with political ads as voters in, say, Georgia are.

But that also means that neither Harris or Trump is all that interested in doing or saying anything that might resonate specifically with Arkansas voters. No, unless you live in one of these golden child swing states, you can just get in line with your state’s dominant party, make a “protest” vote for the other party or – well that’s pretty much it.

Oh, well, I guess there’s the other option… just don’t vote. And honestly, that’s what a lot of elected officials would prefer. You don’t want to vote for Trump and voting for Harris in Arkansas means little to nothing, so you sit this one out, and all the down-ballot Democrats who are desperately trying to remain relevant in an increasingly red state go unsupported.

The same can be said for conservative voters in places like New York and California, where millions of Republican votes “don’t matter” because Harris definitely has those two states on lockdown for the Democrats. It’s a little frustrating that the 2024 election could (well, actually, it will) come down to a few thousand votes in Atlanta or Detroit or Philadelphia.

That, I think, is why many people would prefer to get rid of the Electoral College. Then it really would be “one man, one vote” (or, you know, one woman, one vote), which is hard to argue against outside of, “well, we’ve always done it this way.” While, I can appreciate what the purpose of the Electoral College has been historically, it’s really weird to not simply have a rule here in 2024 that whoever gets the most votes wins.

And in case you’ve never paid attention to it before, the idea that whoever wins a particular state gets all of that state’s electoral votes is not actually in the U.S. Constitution. In fact, two states, Nebraska and Maine actually divide their electoral votes and distribute them by which candidate won each of their congressional districts. Sometimes one candidate gets all of the votes from that state (like Trump in Nebraska in 2016, or Obama in Maine in 2012) but more often the losing candidate manages to win an electoral vote or two in those states.

A method like that would certainly be more representative of how a state like Texas or California actually votes and it would make smaller states like Arkansas more relevant to the candidates, so it kind of makes sense and is a bit of a “meet in the middle” between the current Electoral College system and a simple most-votes-wins method.

Of course, since it makes sense, it most likely means we will never, ever see it happen. So, go vote, good citizens of PaNvAzWiNcMiGa. Please choose carefully, we’re all counting on you.