From the time the United States Supreme Court stepped into Bush v. Gore in 2000 and ruled, incredibly, that the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment precluded a full statewide recount of votes in Florida, AND that this decision should not set any new precedent, it was clear that our modern democratic system of government was anything but democratic.

So when we are asked to consider the results of the 2016 election, we are provided with a long list of circumstances that can best be summed up as shitty. To begin with, the Electoral College is profoundly anti-democratic, and as is typical, they are being asked to decide — for us — the President of the United States.

The Electoral College’s apparent choices are two deeply unpopular candidates, one of which lost the popular vote AND intends to appoint a white supremacist to lead his strategy AND is a transparently unqualified bigot and bully AND only won the electoral vote through clear voter suppression tactics aimed primarily at people of color AND whose wins could not even be verified by meaningful recounts or audits. If ever there was a time for the Electoral College to disrupt an election, this would be the time.

Chris Suprun, the Texas Republican elector who has pledged to vote against Trump, said earlier this month in a well-reasoned and inspiring NY Times Op Ed:

The election of the next president is not yet a done deal. Electors of conscience can still do the right thing for the good of the country. Presidential electors have the legal right and a constitutional duty to vote their conscience. I believe electors should unify behind a Republican alternative, an honorable and qualified man or woman such as Gov. John Kasich of Ohio. I pray my fellow electors will do their job and join with me in discovering who that person should be.

Instead of choosing Hillary Clinton, who has a 54% unfavorability rating, the electors could support Mitt Romney (Kasich has since weighed in against consideration), a relatively moderate Republican who (only) has a 48% unfavorability rating and who boldly stepped up to clearly articulate the dangers of supporting Trump (note: Trump’s favorability rating was about 59% on election day, and has declined to around 50%). To balance out the ticket, they should support Bernie Sanders, who has a 55% FAVORABLE rating, and whose populist popularity did not come at the expense of immigrants, Muslims, people of color, refugees, and other easy scapegoats (except perhaps the members of the billionaire class who think they should be able to buy political power).

After the Electoral College engages in this nasty exercise, the electors should speak out publicly against the institution itself and for meaningful democracy reforms like Ranked Choice Voting (RCV), proportional representation, and getting money out of politics. RCV elevates only those candidates who can demonstrate majority support. If we had RCV in this country, Donald Trump would never receive majority support, while people like Mitt Romney and Bernie Sanders certainly could.

The Electoral College should join together across party lines to block someone who is clearly unqualified — a belligerent, misogynist, bigot who has planet Earth in his crosshairs — and then turn around and get rid of the Electoral College. Its history to protect the power of slave states and to keep the vote for President and Vice President in the hands of wealthy landholders is an ugly one. Let’s do what we can to make 2016 the end of such an archaic vestige of our inglorious democratic experiment.