Well, it's been a bit since the election now. With thoughts moving on towards the fiscal cliff and perhaps filibuster reform, most of us have put the bitter battle behind us.

I want to call it back for just a moment to ponder something - the electoral college.

We all know how this works; none of us actually cast a vote for either Obama or Romney. In this Commonwealth, it was listed on the ballot as "electors for Obama". Here, we have what's called "winner take all"...whoever wins the popular vote in the state gets all the electors too, and they must vote for the candidate as required by the Constitution.

But is that really the best way?

I've been pondering this state...while every county did indeed go blue this time, there are sections of this Commonwealth that I believe were disenfranchised. Think about Massachusetts....it's a microcosm for the United States. Not only does it roughly look like the USA (if you squint), our politics are also somewhat similar. On the East Coast, you've got liberal Boston and Cambridge, and heading southeast, an awful lot of retirees live downcape. Moving to the central part of the state, it's mostly rural and farmland. This was Scott Brown's base. Finally, in the far western reaches, we've got the Appalachian mountains, and a series of liberal college towns along the NY border.

With "winner take all", every person in the state essentially voted for Obama. But that's not the way it happened. A handful of cities and towns actually did vote Red here. What happened to those votes? Essentially...they didn't count.

Turning that around, take a look at a state like Texas. The vast majority of voters chose Romney. But in some liberal enclaves....what happened to those votes? Again, they didn't count.

Take a look at this map:



This is the breakdown by county. I actually find this quite disturbing; given the small number of blue counties and the vast sea of red on this map....but then again, the population distribution is what's key here.

Long ago, it used to be broken down by congressional district. Each district also had an "elector" and the way the district voted was the way the elector was supposed to vote. Over time, that's eroded for whatever reason, and now we have the winner-take-all model in all but two states.

It's of my humble opinion that the congressional district model was fairer and more representative of the people. If we had it this way in 2012, we very well may have had a President Romney, but the results might actually be more faithful to the way people voted in the trenches.

All Politics is Local, but when powers beyond us manipulate the system to ensure that one candidate or the other wins an overwhelming majority through what might be termed ballot trickery....we all lose.

(Sorry - I know this sounds favorable to Romney, but I guess that's just the way it came out. I think my essential points remain valid, however.)