The Supreme Court verdict on presidential polls was not final…or so it seems

By XN IRAKI

The political gerry-mandering between the Jubilee Coalition and CORD did not end with the Supreme Court verdict. It appears there were few loose ends, particularly the electoral process. CORD now wants an electoral college to elect the President. This is purely an American system.

It is curious that the framers of the new Constitution left out that component yet they seem to have been in a hurry to Americanise our electoral or political system with senators, governors, chiefs of staff and a non-elected cabinet.

The thinking behind the Electoral College was that if the one-man-one-vote system was used, the small American States such as Alaska or Rhode Island (which is not an island), which have a population less than that of Kiambu would be marginalised politically.  So the delegates system was introduced to water down the system down. But the trick lies in how the delegates are selected and distributed. Population is a major criterion.

Expansive California has 55 delegates while Alaska has three. The delegates can be redistributed after the census. States, in our case counties, would decide how to distribute delegates assigned.

 In most States, the presidential candidate who secures the highest number of votes carries all the delegates, in others they are shared depending on the percentage of votes the candidate gets. The delegates  then meet to elect the President, each delegate having one vote. Winners gets a majority of the votes. The winning candidate gets the highest number of Electoral College votes. CORD is assuming that it’s possible that one can lose in the popular vote but win through the Electoral College.

  That has happened occasionally in the US, for example with Al Gore versus George W. Bush. Is CORD correct in assuming that such a system will take a minority president to State House?

I think not. First, the big tribes or to be politically correct, communities, will see through this trap if there is a referendum. I see them banding together and replicating the March 4 polls. More curious is that is that even if the proposal went through, the tyranny of numbers will still matter.  I expect bigger counties to have more delegates than smaller ones, elections have always been about numbers. We could argue that President Obama and President Kennedy won the US polls despite being minorities and would still have won without electoral colleges.

Obama is the first black president, although I wonder if he is black, then what colour am I? Kennedy was a Catholic of Irish decent. If you ever lived in the US, you must have heard the jokes about the Irish…just like those about women who carry luggage on buses to avoid being charged for it.

What really matters is for us to reach a level of political maturity that allows voters to see issues without being obstructed by tribal or ethnic fog. That will come with time.

Access to power, resources and prestige are the main drivers in the current Jubilee Coalition /CORD contest. If the Constitution is implemented to the letter, it will not matter who is in State House. Everyone will get a fair share of the country’s resources, jobs and aspirations. 

The debate is buttressed by political idealism —political thinking that does not recognise problems that arise from security concerns where matters such as technological advancements are viewed to be of greater importance than things such as military might.

Kenya is not America. Some of the progressive nations in Asia from Singapore to China have invented their own political models that fit their unique circumstances. We too can do the same.