America Votes

All North America has a stake in the outcome of the American presidential election, but I’ll never understand the process. I’m sure there are many out there who can enlighten me. Let me see if I can get this right.

Each state selects—not elects—an “electoral college” early in the voting process. Each state has a different number of college electors, I assume representing the number of voters in that state. So far, the process has been decided by a small group of unelected people.

Who will eventually run is not decided by the general voter, but by a political party’s own membership nomination convention. This year, the front runners were crowned at the Republican and Democratic conventions.

But on election day, the voters do not vote for the party or the presidential candidate, but whether they agree with each state’s electoral college’s choice for political party. This way candidates win or lose that number of electoral college votes in that state.

The object of the exercise, then, is not to gain the greater number of voter votes, but for a president-elect to gain the most number of electoral college votes. Confusing even for a two way race, which American elections usually are, how about a three way race like Canada?

Are you still confused like me? Of course, I could have it all wrong!

But this election should engage every Canadian. America has ten times our population, so what an American president decides can have a huge impact on our future, and beyond that the well-being of the whole earth.

Of course, I can’t vote, and really—like many Americans—I don’t know what is going on in the American halls of power whoever is elected. But even a president’s power, like any ruler, is in God’s hands.

So to pray for God’s wisdom to endow a president becomes a necessity. He will need that wisdom to restrain the forces of evil that continually threaten to rampage this earth. Will that be a priority for you and me?