November 6

There is one fact of life that I not only did not get in grammar school but have not been able to get it to this day. Such a fuss is made about how we live in a democracy with the rule of “one person, one vote” and the person with the most votes is elected. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work? I suppose that the election debacle in Florida where the guy with the least votes got to be president should have washed away any lingering illusions I might have had that votes actually mean something, but I still don’t get it. In the U.S. presidential election, held on November 6, 1888 incumbent Grover Cleveland[i] received 5,534,488 votes and the challenger Benjamin Harrison[ii] received 5,443,892 votes. So, who was elected President? Cleveland? Nope. Harrison got more votes from the Electoral College and became president. Personally, I think they were swayed by the beard, so he became the big cheese[iii].

[i] Cleveland was the first of only two presidents who were for a time police officers. The other was Theodore Roosevelt.
[ii] Benjamin Harrison, on the 7th of June in 1892, became the first President to attend a baseball game.
[iii] My apologies to those involved in the manufacture of dairy products.