Elke Scholz on Her Book Anxiety Warrior

In this interview, Elke Scholz talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com, about her book, Anxiety Warrior. 

“If we understand what we’re going through, if we’re aware of it, that’s when we can make changes.” ~Elke Scholz

Elke is a certified psychotherapist in both the United States and Canada, and has been practicing for some three decades. She is certified in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy, which is used effectively to treat PTSD, is research based, and has been used for several years. Elke is also a consultant for expressive arts therapy, and to get her certifications, she needed to get a Master’s degree in psychology. Elke is also very much interested in neuroscience, and while she is also a painter, she thinks of herself more as an author, where her creative passions are concerned.

Elke has always known that creative methods help with the neural pathways of the brain, and she also notes that a great deal of communication isn’t verbal. She remarks that there are other ways of communication, or of expressing oneself, other than in written or visual form, such as moving one’s body, which aren’t commonplace in Western culture. People thus heal and manage what goes on in their lives in different ways, with someone who prefers to move their body dealing with life in a manner different from someone who is more auditory in nature, such as wanting to talk. Elke notes that math and language are interconnected, and she has participated in programs which enabled struggling students to jump grades “within weeks” when creativity was married with education.

The human brain, according to Elke, holds both large and little traumas, and she notes that this, as well as such aspects as attachment, can be influenced by the belief systems one is involved in when growing up. She also notes that any change is a loss, and gives the example of someone leaving to a new community to take on a more exciting job. Elke notes that being aware of such things helps out, with self-awareness being key to managing one’s brain. “You are not your brain,” she remarks, adding that it is the first organ to form, and it collects and manages data from the start, and along with that are thoughts, memories and learning. The brain processes four billion bits of information per second, and it can also generate thoughts which, if one isn’t self-aware, one would think would be one’s own.

“The whole idea is to partner with the brain,” Elke emphasizes, noting that the brain can be trained in different ways to think, noting that the brain generates some 50,000 thoughts per day. The work she does thus helps one master one’s brain, and creativity plays a part in doing so by enabling one to enter liminal space, a place where one is present to the present. In this space, the neural pathways fire in different ways, effectively rewiring the brain somewhat and creating new thoughts which one wouldn’t have been able to think of before, or break old thought patterns which one would otherwise not break away from. This type of therapy enables people to trust their bodies and to tap into their own inner wisdom, thus enabling them to help themselves heal.

Anxiety Warrior sprang from Elke having her own strain of generalized anxiety, which wasn’t diagnosed until she was in her thirties. This diagnosis, and her curiosity, led her down the path she is now taking, and over the course of the years she not only created several handouts but also felt a bit like “a broken record,” as the people who kept coming to her did so with just about the same symptoms. “We, in North America, don’t have enough resources to help people,” she notes, remarking that people “fall through the cracks” because they don’t have enough money or insurance. After looking at a pile of handouts that she had, she realized that she probably had a book ready, and it was after going to her editor that she and her editor finally fleshed the book itself out.

Elke notes that anxiety comes from eleven different spaces, and that these can be changed within an hour, when the right methods are used. Anxiety Warrior also provides people with a definition of terms for what anxiety is, as well as gives some methods by which people can manage it. That said, Elke remarks that anxiety, on its own, isn’t a bad thing, as it acts to warn us of something that might come up, which would concern us. Trauma, she adds, “comes at the end,” and results in such behaviors as second-guessing and perfectionism. “Life doesn’t dole out stresses evenly,” Elke notes, so both she and the book enable people to create strategies to manage the stresses they inevitably encounter and feel.

Elke shares two words with others: awareness (the more aware one is, the better one can create changes) and practice (figure out what works for oneself).

Purchase from Amazon: 

Anxiety Warrior by Elke Scholz

Kris Holmes on Igniting Your Career Plus Strategies and Tactics to Unleash Your Potential

In this interview, Kris Holmes talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com, about her book, Ignite Your Career! Strategies and Tactics to Unleash Your Potential.

“You want to have substance and be clear and concise.” ~Kris Holmes

Kris started her career in brand marketing and stayed in it for around a decade before switching to executive recruiting, which is what she has been involved with for over two decades now. She admits that, while she was good at some aspects in brand marketing, there were also other aspects that she struggled with, and after doing some self-assessment she decided to switch over to executive recruiting. “There are some overlaps,” Kris states about the two jobs, noting that, as a marketer, she had to be very strategic, able to figure out what is actually needed as well as to connect with people to buy into one’s objectives, as the people a marketer needs to influence do not work for them. Kris was good at the people aspect of being a marketer, and this is what works well in recruiting, as she is able to connect what people want with the careers that would make sense to them.

When comparing how one would enter the job market today compared to how to do so at the dawn of the Internet age, decades ago, Kris remarks that there are some challenges as well as benefits. It is easier, today, to network, thanks to social media platforms such as LinkedIn, which makes it easier to find people to connect with, such as for mentorship or finding jobs. This also means that the job market is also more competitive and makes it more challenging to enable an applicant to stand out from the rest. Kris believes that the younger generation “is being led astray,” given the message for people to follow their passion, as she believes that the best way for someone to have a long-term career is to build a strong foundation by getting the best experience possible, as well as being someone people want because one can apply best practices and be someone who knows what is going on in one’s field. “It is really hard to go backwards,” Kris remarks of people who would follow their passion before building their foundation.

Kris urges people to assess their innate strengths and what make them unique, noting that people mistake what comes naturally for them as being their strengths. She recommends asking friends and family for one or two things that one is strong in, as well as writing down all the things one liked and disliked when one thinks back on jobs and projects that one has worked on, then culling down the top five aspects. Kris also suggests taking strength finding surveys, which will give one’s top five strengths as well as suggestions of fields where one would be successful in. Kris also recommends YouScience, which figures out not only one’s strengths but also how one’s brain is wired, as well as suggesting fields where one would be successful in. Where she, herself, is concerned, Kris admits that she was somewhat embarrassed that recruiting seemed so easy to her, and remarks that this was because her career fit in with her strengths well.

For older people who shift careers is concerned, Kris believes they should figure out the skills they had developed over the years, the strengths they have, and the combination of where these two can merge well. She also suggests that such people figure out what their driver is, be it still building up their career, making a difference in the world or earning enough savings for their retirement. “They need to know those before they start applying,” she adds. Networking is also very important, Kris also notes, adding that people should start networking as early as high school or college, starting off by asking about what some professors are like. She recommends making networking a part of one’s daily life, as this will pay dividends in the future, such as mentorship, getting advice and activating it to get a job. Networking makes it easy for people to get in touch with others and speak with them from a place of having kept in touch every now and then, rather than just calling up out of the blue and sounding desperate. The present pandemic, Kris remarks, has made networking more widespread, noting that she has spoken to more CEO’s in the past year compared to in the decade before that.

Ignite Your Career! sprang from Kris’s years of experiences, working with college students, and while she noted that some of these schools might have had great career centers, the students themselves wanted the information that she was giving them. Kris then realized that students in schools where career centers weren’t existent or were less able, and she got “a kick in the pants” from her life coach to get writing - something she really went into during the pandemic. The book consists of a strategic part, which covers the elements one would need to think about, long-term, about one’s career, and a tactical part, which enables one to do the nitty-gritty of what needs to be done. “It is meant to be one-stop shopping that you can get back to in your career, again and again,” Kris emphasizes, adding that the information in the book is derived from her decades of work at the O’Connell Group.

Kris notes that it is important for people to tell stories about themselves, as a way to make their point in a way that they, themselves, can remember. She remarks that people make their stories in the STAR format, which she refers to as Situation - Thinking (which is different from industry to industry) - Action - Result.

Where resigning is concerned, Kris, being a believer in maintaining positive relationships in one’s career, notes that doing so in a respectful manner is important. That said, she also notes that, while people accept counteroffers, that which drives them to leave will still be around, which is why she recommends that people respectfully turn these down, as doing so will waste everyone’s time. She also points out that one doesn’t know where one’s present bosses will be in the future, and there will always be the possibility that they would want to hire one further down the road.

For possible coaching, Kris can be contacted at igniteyourcareerbook.com.

Purchase from Amazon: 

Ignite Your Career! Strategies and Tactics to Unleash Your Potential by Kris Holmes

Anthony Brinkley on Journaling His Rise to Manhood (You Can't Run Away from You)

In this interview, Anthony Brinkley talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com, about his book, You Can't Run Away from You: Journaling the Rise to Manhood: Volume 1.

“Vulnerability is not weakness, but is actually strength on display.” ~Anthony Brinkley

Anthony had a challenging childhood growing up, experiencing such things as being needed to be treated for tuberculosis at the age of five and having a gun pulled on him in first grade. His life was “kind of a mess” until he decided to turn it around, during freshman year in high school. Anthony acknowledges that school wasn’t a priority with his family, and he hung out in his freshman year with seniors who didn’t need to show up. Not surprisingly, he “racked up” F’s, and the time came when his report card came in and he became alarmed enough with all his failing marks that he made a deal with God - that he wouldn’t “screw up again,” if he wasn’t kicked out of school. He would have been so kicked out had he got four F’s; as it was, he got three, so he stayed in. Another motivator for him was seeing the pain his mother felt when Anthony’s own brother didn’t pass high school, and he didn’t want to hurt her any more than possible.

Anthony remarks that: “I didn’t know God, but God knew me,” adding that this truism showed up in his life with all the people who showed up at moments in his life when he needed them, such as his uncle Adolph who gave him jobs to keep an eye on him as he grew up - people who helped him become “a better version” of himself.

Anthony noted his family’s 18th birthday tradition of driving home the point that, from then on, one had to provide for themselves, and it was around then that he joined the Air Force. He served for 28 years, underwent 14 major moves and led around 100,000 people. Anthony notes that all Air Force installations are essentially small cities in themselves, which means that just about any job present in society can be found in the Air Force. He also notes that people don’t pick the people they work with, emphasizing this with a story that he once told the people he worked with that anyone out to kill them didn’t care if they were Christian, Jewish, Muslim, white, Asian or Hispanic - they were out to kill Americans, period. He thus emphasized his people treating each other with respect and as a team.

Anthony achieved the rank of E-9, the rank of Command Chief Master Sergeant, which is the highest rank possible for enlisted personnel. This meant that he had around as many responsibilities and commanded as many people as a commissioned officer. Anthony notes that non-commissioned officers - NCOs - are the ones to translate the directives set down by officers to the enlisted personnel, who are the ones who actually do the work that needs to be done. His work, as an E-9, was to lead his fellow sergeants under his command, and gave him an opportunity to serve others.

Anthony admits that he pushed people away, because of the events he experienced in his childhood, and his stay in the Air Force forced him to face up to such events, as he needed to engage with others as part of his work. “True growth and true connectivity, intimacy, is connected directly to vulnerability,” he remarks. He also notes that half of learning is learning, while the other half is unlearning what was taught wrong - the latter being something which people don’t work on. In his opinion, someone who operated by the principle, “Fake it ‘til you make it” is someone who won’t remember who he or she really is once they reach a level of success. “Face it until you make it,” he advises.

According to Anthony, 50% of Americans experience some sort of trauma before the age of 14, and 75% experience trauma by the age of 24, and he remarks that it’s impossible to move ahead in life without dealing with the effects of such trauma, in order to create “a more cohesive individual or group.” He also notes that the United States has around 5% of the world’s population but also consumes 85% of psychotropic drugs consumed worldwide, which is, as he notes, is a disjunction, as it is unlikely that 5% of the world’s population holds 85% of the world’s pain. In his opinion, Americans are taught to run away from pain, but as he notes that one cannot heal if one hides from pain. (This is something he knows from experience, as alcohol was his choice of pain numbing substance.)

“All a crisis is, is a bunch of data,” Anthony notes, and how it is determined to be good or bad depends on how one reacts to it. The true tests in life, he says, using a school analogy, are not the scheduled tests but the pop quizzes. He thus works with people to ready for any such possible pop quizzes in life by helping them learn about themselves, so they can overcome such crises. As a pop quiz isn’t a final exam, one can study where one went wrong and then learn from it and carry it forward, Anthony adds.

Anthony admits that he would have been a “horrible employee” because he had an independent perspective on things, and this was what drove him to start his own business once he left the Air Force, and he found mentors along the way who taught him how to run a business, which enables him to help others become themselves.

You Can’t Run Away from You started out as a private journal for Anthony and Volume 1 covers the first 19 years of his life, and covers a lot of topics. He notes that there are likely two more books which will come out. In his opinion, his wrote it so that his book is about life, rather than himself, so a reader can remember and recall an incident in their own life which makes such a story real, so that they “stop seeing” Anthony and see themselves.

Anthony advises people to accept help from the people around them, as he, himself, is living proof of how far one can go by doing so. “Fight for the life you have, and you’re here to do something special,” he notes, “even if you haven’t realized it. Make the rest of your life the best of your life.”

Purchase from Amazon: You Can't Run Away from You: Journaling the Rise to Manhood: Volume 1 by Anthony Brinkley

Maria Espinosa on Writing Her Suburban Souls Novel

In this interview, Maria Espinosa talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com, about her novel, Suburban Souls.

“Go with your instincts. Believe in yourself.” ~Maria Espinosa

Maria Espinosa was actually born Paula Cronbach, of Jewish parents, but she admits she never felt at home with her given name. She felt more attuned to the name “Maria,” so when she got the opportunity to change her name, she did so.

Writing was something that Maria had strongly felt that she had wanted to do, even though she didn’t particularly want to write. While she wrote throughout high school, she really got into writing when she wrote out a journal during a difficult time in her life, while she was in college. She began writing stories for her friends while still in high school, and she got started by self-publishing books of her poems. Her first novel, Dark Plums, came out when she was in her forties, published by a press that she had started with some female friends, and this was picked up later on by a Hispanic publisher, whose people thought she was Hispanic, due to her name being what it was.

Maria notes that she follows the advice of Woody Allen, who says that writers should sit down and actually write, and that she also reads and sets a schedule for herself - something which, she admits, is something she finds somewhat challenging, particularly now that she’s gotten older.

Where her books are concerned, Maria remarks that her first two novels are semi-autobiographical, in that the emotions that are written about in the book are essentially her own. She also noted that the character of a Jewish man who appeared in Dark Plums was a character who she didn’t originally intend to become a main character, and that that person was someone who, later on, she would meet and who would become her second husband.

Where writing is concerned, Maria notes that doing so has enabled her to become more aware of other people, as she needs to inhabit a character fully, to know that person’s feelings, emotions and motivations, when she writes. This, in turn, enables her to understand more about herself, and when she looked back over what she wrote over the years, she notes that those writings reflect the changes she has experienced throughout her life. Writing also enables her to explore her own emotions, as she notes that a writer’s own emotions become part of the story the writer works on.

Maria is also not slowing down, despite presently being 82 years old, as she is presently writing out three novels as well as a non-fiction book on homeless people whom she interviewed - a process she describes as being something similar to “a bird building its nest.”

Maria remarks that she knows Holocaust survivors and how living through such an experience affected them and continues to affect their lives, which is how she was able to accurately portray the character of a Holocaust survivor in Suburban Souls. She also knows people who lived in dysfunctional marriages, including those where at least one of the partners ignores the other, and this also served as the model for the protagonist’s marriage in the novel.

Maria notes the adage, “Youth would and age could,” remarking that, if she had the confidence she presently has now while she was back in her twenties, doing so could have saved her “a lot of heartache.” She also advises people to follow a quote she once heard: “Don’t let other people tell you who you are, tell other people who you are.”

Purchase from Amazon: Suburban Souls by Maria Espinosa

Alexandra Bracken on the Writing of Lore

In this interview, Alexandra Bracken talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com, about her novel, Lore.

“Writing is one of those things where, to improve, you have to put the mileage into it.” ~Alexandra Bracken

Alexandra was always interested in storytelling as a child, and this was something she knew she wanted to do even then. While double-majoring in college, she decided to join a month-long writing competition intended to enable participants to create a novel within a month’s time, and while she did succeed, that novel wasn’t published. Her first novel went out of print because the publisher closed shop, and as the rights then reverted to her, Alex recently (as of this interview) reprinted the story as a graphic novel.

Alex noted that, in the United States, there has been a “steep learning curve” on social issues, and this has made her more aware of such issues when she writes her books, with her taking such steps as having readers check to see how authentic her characters are. She notes, as well, that this was parallel to her growth as a person, adding that there is always something more to learn when writing, saying that: “There is always something to learn and try out.” Alex remarks that “different stories present different challenges,” which, for her, means that a writer needs to start from scratch when writing out a story with a genre or style different from that which one has written before. To improve her craft, Alex reads craft books to see what more she can learn, particularly since, when she started out, she was an intuitive writer.

Alex remarks that feedback is important for a writer, but that this is varied, as each reader brings his or her own opinions and tastes into the review. She thus focuses more on professional reviews as well as those from other authors, so she can better her craft, and gave some examples of these. That said, she also accepts non-professional reviews which help her improve her craft.

Where trying to please everybody is concerned, Alex notes that: “You can drive yourself batty,” while also adding that she cares about how people read her books. That said, where writing a novel is concerned, it takes one to two years from the start of writing to getting published, so a writer needs to be passionate about the characters and the story to maintain such an engagement for such a long time.

Alex notes that, for young adult readers, character-driven stories are important, as this audience loves emotional stories where they can connect with the characters, which helps the story resonate with them. She likes writing for young adults because the latter live at a time in their lives where a lot of things are “high stakes,” and where young adults experience such “firsts” such as first love and first taste of freedom, particularly since they are finding out who they are and what they want to be.

Where creating ideas for stories is concerned, Alex figuratively cooks these in a “stew pot” and then picks up a story from there, giving the example of Lore springing from her reading Greek mythology as a child. She keeps what she calls a “wish list” of the kinds of stories she wants to write, with one of these being competition. Lore thus sprang from a combination of her exposure to Greek myths and her desire to write a story about competition.

Although Lore is based on Greek mythology, Alex has also included themes of the importance of confronting one’s personal past, and the past in general, to move on to a better future. Another theme of the book is the pursuit of power, and the possible tradeoffs from doing so.

To other writers, Alex remarks that practicing is a good way to grow one’s craft, and for them to find stories that they could write in “their own, unique way.”

Purchase from Amazon: Lore by Alexandra Bracken

John Hart on His Novel, The Unwilling

In this interview, John Hart talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com, about his novel, The Unwilling.

“The finest writers out there are still honing their craft.” ~John Hart

John Hart was 40 when his first novel came out, which makes him a late bloomer. That said, his first published novel was the result of decades of honing his writing craft (during which time he wrote out two “unpublishable” novels). Much as he wanted to become an author and a writer, he didn’t want to “leave things to chance,” which was why he went to graduate school twice (accounting and law; he wrote his unpublished novels during these times). As a criminal defense attorney, he “rubbed up” against “a lot of bad guys,” which meant that he got a good idea of how criminals acted and behaved, and it was when he was slated to defend a child rapist that he decided to focus on writing.

It took John four years to get his first novel, The King of Lies, was published, which was “a quiet and lonesome affair,” as there was nobody around to tell him how to the process worked. Rejections, he note, are part of the process and part of the path for all published writers, and one of the things he needed to accept were the number of naysayers who were against his writing - naysayers who seemed to take his ambition personally and negatively. This reaction, John believes, is due to people giving up dreams of their own and who, when they meet up someone who is working on his dream, feel insecure about giving up their own dreams.

Where the craft of writing is concerned, John remarks that there is a learning curve involved and that nothing beats actually being at the keyboard and writing things out. He notes that writers have to be critical about their work, and that finding a “beta test reader” who has the sensibility and the critical eye necessary to enable the story to succeed is extremely important to a writer’s success. John also notes that a writer’s “mental space” is also important, as there needs to be a balance between honest feedback and feedback from insecure people. Writer egos also come into play here, with John giving an example of a would-be writer friend who asked him to critique a short passage. John spent hours going over it and critiquing it, and his friend’s angry response resulted in their not speaking for nearly a decade. By contrast, when John spoke with author Patricia Cornwell, who has been publishing popular novels since 1990, he found her to be humble enough to recognize that she still has a lot to learn.

John admits that he has to be “aware of the marketplace,” and that he is wary about following trends, such as the trend which followed Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. That said, he notes that a writer needs to be passionate about the people and the world that he is creating, as a writer could be involved with that particular story for one to two years, thinking and working on it even in what appears to be their leisure time. Writing purely to please another person, he notes, makes an author “ten steps behind, right out of the gate,” but an author also needs to know enough of his audience with his presentation, with John giving the example of toning down the profanity in his books to cater to this.

A writer needs to love, in some way, “even the most despicable character ever written” in his story, particularly since he focuses on making his stories character driven. That said, John’s style of writing and development is “organic,” rather than using notes and outlines, going for “what feels real” and what would motivate the characters. He notes that people are already set in who they are by the time they are adults, even if they aren’t aware of it, and he goes into making the reader understand what the character is all about, even if the character, himself, doesn’t understand what he is all about. One of the things John has also learned is to allow readers to fill in the blanks, rather than write out every last detail of who and what a character is.

The Unwilling might take place in the past, but John notes that all of his books have some element of family relationships and drama, as just about everyone has had experience with family relationships. He notes that a lot of people said that his books start out slowly and build up to the end, and John remarks that this is because he wants the reader to spend time with the characters, so they know who they are dealing with. That said, John makes sure to give the reader a tradeoff for their patience, by planting some compelling questions that make the reader wonder about the situation and the characters involved, and then gives some examples of this.

“Part of the job is putting false modesty aside,” John remarks, noting that he doesn’t mind telling people what he does. He notes that a lot of writers are actually introverts, and he credits his publisher, at the early part of his career, with helping build his reputation as a “literary thriller” writer. For John, “literary” refers to details related to other than plot - characterization, for one thing. He attributes his use of language to enabling a reader to emotionally respond to a situation beyond that which a scene or a character would warrant, particularly with the kind of scenes which would make a reader want to put the book down and wonder. He credits this style of his to his wife, as she prefers a literary style, and John needed to get her buy-in to start his career as a writer to begin with, as he was quitting being an attorney to do so.

Where the writing industry is concerned, John notes that the writing business is a “hard” and a “cold” one, but it is also a vibrant one which needs new voices, as it is a constantly evolving business. He believes that new, young talent need to bring their voices in, and likewise believes that these should be encouraged.

Purchase from Amazon: The Unwilling by John Hart

Robert M. Hardaway: Saving the Electoral College: Why the National Popular Vote Would Undermine Democracy

In this interview, Robert Hardaway talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com, about his book, Saving the Electoral College: Why the National Popular Vote Would Undermine Democracy.

“We've been through this so many times in our history, it's kind of become old hat.” ~Robert Hardaway

Robert was in government class in high school, where a member of Congress would talk on a particular current topic, after which the class would be split into two parties, with Robert being the head of one party and Al Gore (who would later become the 45th Vice President of the United States) to debate the issue. The electoral college was one on such topic covered, and since then Robert has spent time as an attorney in the US Navy’s Judge Advocate General corps and as an assistant district attorney in Colorado. He has also spent the last 40 years researching on the electoral college, culminating in several books and articles on the topic.

According to Robert, the electoral method is enshrined in Article 2 of the United States constitution, where the legislature of each state will select a certain number of electors who will cast their vote in the electoral college. This system, Robert notes, is very similar to that of parliamentary democracies, such as the United Kingdom, except that, in the United Kingdom, the electors are Members of Parliament (MPs). The electoral college is kept separate from Congress (which is designed only to pass legislation), to maintain the independence of the executive, legislative and judiciary arms of the United States government. Up until 1876, state legislators selected the electors themselves, but after that time, the states delegated that responsibility to the people, which is why people vote - for their electors.

An elector cannot be a member of the state government, and can be anyone. Each party puts up a slate of people which acts as electors, and when people go to vote, each party thus effectively tells each voter to vote for the slate of their party, each member of the slate being a member of their particular party who has been nominated by that party to be an elector. Each elector has to be of at least 21 years of age and a citizen of the United States, and their only responsibility is to vote for a candidate in the electoral college. Some states put the names of the electors down, which means that a voter can pick and choose amongst individual electors from both parties, while other states do not so name their electors, which means that each voter then votes for a particular party’s slate.

Each state is guaranteed at least three electors: at least one based on how many representatives that state has in the House of Representatives, as well as at least two electors based on their representation in the Senate. The number of electors posted might vary, but this is based on the principle that each state, no matter how small in terms of population, should have equal representation in Congress. This split, which was proposed by Benjamin Franklin and which was subsequently adopted, between the upper and lower houses of the United States government, with the upper house (the Senate) having one member from each state, and the lower house (Congress) having a number of representatives based on that state’s population. Benjamin Franklin’s proposal was vital as, at the time of the Constitutional Convention, the various states then in existence were in danger of fragmenting and becoming entirely different nations, all of whose economies were nearing collapse and all of whom were squabbling with each other - a situation which was greatly to the advantage of the then-ruling British king, George IV.

Robert notes that, in the present system, when people vote, they do not vote for a party’s president. Instead, they vote for a slate of electors, and it is these electors who actually vote for the candidates concerned. He also remarks that the popular issue is when the so-called “popular vote” does not seem to jibe with the electoral vote.

According to Robert, some states are presently forming a cabal (the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, or NPVIC) whose members are essentially choosing to ignore the will of the people in their own state by declaring a winner based on a hypothetical popular vote projected from other states - something which, Robert points out, doesn’t exist under the present electoral system. (A popular vote would result in national elections where people write in the name of their candidate, and the winner being declared based on the most number of votes for that candidate.) Robert remarks that such a drive has existed for some time, but it runs into the non-amendable requirement that each state should have equal representation in the Senate. As Article 5 of the Constitution states that the electoral college cannot be abrogated unless all members of the Senate agree to do so, and as the small-population states would want to ensure their continued representation in the government, it is highly unlikely that the move to convert the electoral system from that of the present electoral college to a national popular vote will come into being. Robert noted that this equal representation is the basis of the existence of the United States, particularly since it was because of this that the smaller states joined the Union.

Robert quotes John F. Kennedy as saying: “A popular vote election will increase the likelihood of a president being elected by a minority of the voters. It will break down the federal system in which the states entered the Union, which provides a system of checks and balances to ensure that no area or group shall obtain too much power.” Robert points out that, with a popular vote, a president could be elected from more populous areas, such as coastal cities, with the result that those states or groups which supported the resultant president would get more favors compared to those states or groups which were smaller in population. The electoral college is thus designed to support the Founding Fathers’ ideal of having a president with popular support throughout the nation, rather than from one particular region.

Robert points out that nations which use the popular vote can wind up with presidents that the majority of the population actually reject. He cites the case of France, where, in the 2017 elections, the two better-perceived candidates were nudged out by a margin of 2%, leaving the French voters with an extreme-right candidate and a moderate but most likely ineffectual candidate to choose from, both of whom were supported only by a minority of the population. The French voters were so disgusted by the unwanted choices that over three million of them submitted blank ballots in the run-off elections.

Where electors are concerned, Robert notes that human beings aren’t really needed to be electors, as the individual names of the electors don’t need to be known. This is a housekeeping recommendation he puts forth, with each individual vote going to that of the number of electors in a particular state, creating an automatic allocation of votes. Another recommendation was that governors certify the votes within ten days, and that Congress not need to count the votes themselves. He also notes that, in Great Britain, people vote for a member of parliament who is affiliated with a party because they are assured that the person they voted for will thus vote for a leader that is a member of that particular party.

Robert bemoans that most Americans don’t know what the electoral college is all about, particularly since electors are so elected only once every four years. He also notes that the perception that the electoral college vote doesn’t jibe with the hypothetical popular vote took place in 1888, 2000 and 2016, and notes that this also happens in parliamentary democracies, citing the case of the 1974 election in Great Britain, when the Labor Party won, despite the Conservative Party having the greater number of hypothetical popular votes.

Robert noted that the electoral college is responsible for the two-party system, and mentioned the case of the Socialists in 1932, which had 15% of the American population’s support. The Socialists realized that, despite such support, they couldn’t get an electoral vote unless they had a plurality in a single state, so they went to the Democratic Party and compromised with them to do so. Such alliances ensure broad support for a candidate within a given party.

Robert remarked that he had been called to testify about the electoral college twice. He appeared in front of the Colorado legislature in 2007, which swung the vote against the NPVIC, and again in 2020, as one of over 300 people who wanted to witness at the hearing. He was told he only had a minute, which would have been impossible for him to make a dent in the current for the NPVIC.

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Saving the Electoral College: Why the National Popular Vote Would Undermine Democracy by Robert Hardaway