Louise Erdrich Quotes
We have a huge struggle for our sense of what a democracy is. We're not living in reality when we think we have some sort of democracy. We're really on the edge. We have two presidents who lost the popular vote but won the election. This is not working.
Erdrich, Louise. "Louise Erdrich on Her Dystopian Novel 'Future Home of the Living God'." Interview by Terry Gross. Fresh Air, NPR, 21 Nov. 2017.
Al Gore had substantially won the popular vote but needed Florida to win the electoral vote. There had been a series of vote counting irregularities with many people being denied the right to vote to the point that no one was sure who had won Florida. The election moved from the ballot box to the courts and the Florida Supreme Court ruled that there should be some recounts in areas where Bush had supposedly won. The Bush forces and the Republicans appealed to the Supreme Court where the judges all reversed their traditional positions to support the party who had nominated them. Liberals who usually voted to have the Federal government override the states, voted for Florida to be upheld. Conservatives who usually supported the right of the States to decide such things without Federal Interference, voted to overturn the State Supreme Court. There were 5 Republicans and 6 Democrats and George W. Bush won the election by one judge’s vote.
Jefferson thought that the possibility that a man could become President even though more Americans voted for his opponent was undemocratic and a great flaw in our Constitution. It has actually happened several times and each time the Electoral College debate renewed, but there has never been enough concern to produce a Constitutional Amendment.
This is not just a theoretical possibility. It has occurred several times. The latest was on the 1990 election where Gore got half a million more votes than George W. Bush, but Bush became President.
The electoral college had tied between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, and under the Constitution, this threw the decision to the House of Representatives. The House was deadlocked politically between Federalists and Democratic Republicans, but Jefferson had won the popular vote by a substantial margin. Morris, a leading Federalist, and one of Jefferson’s political enemies, however argued that the will of the people should be respected, and the man who won the popular should be President. The vote then went to Jefferson who became our third President.
Donald Trump had won the presdiency by winning a majority of the votes of the Electoral College. However his opponent Hillary Clinton garnered about 2 million more votes. Several other presidents have won with a minority vote. These occurances did not affect the Presidents' legitimacy as the Electoral College was specified in the Constitution, However, it did undercut the concept that the President had a mandate. Other presidents just carried on and either earded the respect of the majoprity of AMericans or did not over time. Howevewr, Trump, who was so sensitive and fragile about his image, kept responding to comedians like Bee by claiming that the only reason he lost the poular vote was voter fraud by illegal immigrants. However he never offered any evidence of such and there were no convictions for same or even arrests and trials.
This quotation illustrates the "winner take all" conceopt of many political cultures that call themselves and think of theselves as a democracy. But a true democracy does not allow a tyranny of the majority--especially a very narrow minority.
Louise Erdrich is an American author, writer of novels, poetry, and children's books featuring Native American characters and settings. She is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, a federally recognized tribe of the Anishinaabe (also known as Ojibwe and Chippewa).
