Posted on 04/14/2011 8:07:12 PM PDT by TheConservativeCitizen
The Electoral College, the means by which Americans chose their President throughout the nations history, is facing its most serious challenge yet. Polling shows that 75% of Americans no longer see the value of the institution, and want to switch over to direct democratic elections where the winner of the national popular vote also wins the Presidency. There are two ways of achieving this end. The first, a Constitutional Amendment, is a long and difficult process that requires the approval of 3/4 of the states. However, there exists an alternative method that goes around the Electoral College by abolishing it in practice without abolishing it on paper. Although the amount of electoral votes a state gets is Constitutionally determined, how it chooses to award them is left up to the individual state. With the passage of a simple bill, a state can award all of its electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, essentially bypassing the College. The backers of the repeal under the umbrella group National Popular Vote are going state by state passing laws to end the Electoral College, already six states plus DC, totaling 74 electoral votes, have passed the legislation. This is 27% of the electoral votes needed to abolish the College. The laws are passed in such a way that they will only take effect when a critical mass of the majority of Electoral College votes is reached, at that point it will no longer matter how other states divide their vote, and the Electoral College will be officially dead.
But is this change good for America?
Supporters of repeal claim the Electoral College is undemocratic, in a close election it is possible for the loser of the popular vote to scramble together a winning majority of electoral votes, as has recently happened in the 2000 Presidential election. A second way that the College is undemocratic, is the fact that the electoral votes are not directly proportional to a states population. A state gets electoral votes equal to the sum of its Congressmen (amount determined by population) and Senators (each state gets two), hence tiny states with only one representative triple their electoral weight thanks to the extra two electoral votes from the Senators, meanwhile large states like California with 53 representatives gain proportionally much less from the two extra votes. As a result, California gets one electoral vote for 615,848 citizens, while Wyoming gets one for every 164,594 citizens, hence when one votes in Wyoming, his vote counts almost quadruple what a Californians vote counts. Opponents of the College point out that it is odd for a nation that portrays itself as the guardian of Democracy to not follow the “one man, one vote” mantra.
A second argument against the Electoral college is that it disenfranchises large segments of the population. Since under the College almost all states divide their electoral votes on a winner takes all basis, political minorities within states are silenced. For example liberal California is actually home to more conservatives than any state in the union other than Texas, but millions of California conservatives are effectively silenced by the liberal majority. Similarly most southern states, while staunchly conservative, are home to large urban black populations that vote democratic but are never heard in Presidential elections. Lastly there is also a bias towards politically neutral states, with candidates spending the majority of their time and money in a handful of battleground states like Ohio and Florida, ignoring enormous states like Texas, California, and New York because they are unlikely to switch sides. With a national popular vote, candidates would be forced to run truly national campaigns, and all votes would matter equally.
Supporters of the College provide two arguments in its defense. First they point out the intentions of the founders to make America a republic, not a democracy. They argue that the College empowers states, sacrificing some democracy in favor of federalism, state rights, and the decentralization of power. Abolishing the college would greatly weaken the power of the states relative to the federal government, and America’s republican character would be lost in favor of a more centralized European system. The second argument is that abolishing the College would empower large population centers at the expense of small rural communities. If Wyoming is home to only 0.18% of the US population spread in rural communities over a large state, it makes little sense for a Presidential candidate to go there instead of making an extra stop in some large city. Densely populated states and large cities are already home to alot of unofficial power in the form of finance, business, media, entertainment, and bureaucratic institutions, abolishing the Electoral College would only increase this power once again making America a more centralized nation.
On the battlefield of the American Civil War it was determined that the United States is a nation, not a confederacy of semi-sovereign states. Since that time America has increasingly become both less republican and more centralized and democratic. Abolishing the electoral college will further erode away the power of the states in favor of a strong centralized government and direct democracy. In a way the last gasp of the Electoral College system may also be the last shot of the Civil War.
ROFLMAO
Without Texas, Florida, and sometimes Ohio voting conservative it soon won’t matter whether we continue with the Electoral College or go to the popular vote. With all the population growth in Texas it is a must that they remain conservative. As go Texas so goes the Union!
True that. Most folks are shocked when I show them that even with the electoral college, you can lose 39 states and still win.
He/She would be a dyed in the wool demagogue. This person would not be wanting anyone to stand in their way. The last bastion intended by the framers of the constitution to prevent mobocracy, would thus be sundered.
The only thing that needs abolishing are the politicians that support this garbage!
The real goal is to massively amplify the effect of vote fraud in the big cities.
Without the Constitutional mandate of the Electoral College, any other method would fall subject to the one man/one vote rule. That would mean proportional division of the vote.
This would mean places like California and Texas would lose a lot of power because they now have undue influence with a winner-take-all system - 100% of the votes going to the winning candidate who may only have 40% of the actual vote.
Also, Democrats think because of the Gore loss that they would win a nationwide popular vote. Not necessarily true. States with overwhelming majorities, like California and New York democrats, discourage voters for the losing side from even showing up, thereby reducing the Republican vote count. Knowing that their votes would count nationally even if they are a small minority in their state, more Republicans would show up to vote.
In 2000, a lot of Republicans in those states stayed home in a hopeless cause. Thus Gore’s narrow count victory margin. Had there beeen a national referendum, a lot more Republicans would have voted.
Also, a national referendum would mandate the exact same voting laws across the states, so you would see things like photo ID mandates, no election day registration, etc.
Democrats need to be careful what they wish for.
Even worse, they would be decided on LA and NYC television.
The electoral college makes many states relevant.
Without it they’d only care about campaigning in a few places, mainly the very large urban (democrat) cities.
Much better to keep what’s been working the last 233 years.
Not saying 75% is the right number, but I think more than half don’t. Simply because they aren’t taught US history that we were taught in school anymore. I can see that because they were never taught why it’s a good thing. You’ve got lib teachers who love socialism and new textbooks that hate America.
That is the crucial issue. To steal an election now, one party must steal votes in a state dominated by the other party. Without the Electoral College, they can steal votes where the stealing is easy.
Every liberal state would become like King County in Washington, which once reported more votes than they had registered voters. That result should have landed some people in prison.
I agree, the 17th Amendment allowed all power to flow to the elites in D.C.
It would be another nail in the coffin of our Republic if the Electoral College is bypassed. It would be a leftist dream come true. Fraud would become even more rampant. Heck, Chicago alone might have 100Million votes!
Our Founders were unique in world history. They gave us a Constitution that allowed Capitalism to flourish and propel our Republic to unheralded prosperity.
I believed the Electoral College was Madison's idea. Our Founders were geniuses without equal. Today our leaders are ....
Just give them 50%+ 1 dupes to vote on everything. They will buy the votes with other peoples money. Like unions in Wisconsin.
They just plain hate The Constitution. It actually puts laws on paper.
Russia had it right. Everything was illegal. The state just decided when you went to prison.
yitbos
It was James Wilson's idea.
This column misses one *critical* benefit to the Electoral College - it confines election controversies to one state or a small number of states in very close elections. If the popular vote is within a few thousand votes nationwide under the system envisioned by these clowns, you would have Florida 2008 writ nationwide. That would get extremely ugly.
Which would mean that basically five states would always elect the next president. The Electoral College was formed to prevent that very sort of thing from happening.
People whom support this do not know what they’re doing. It makes it so the big cities are the only ones to campaign in...and reduces the required influence needed in smaller regional politics. Rudy G’s are all we’ll get...rhinos from there-on in.
This represents an existential threat to this republic.
As if we didn’t have enough of those already...
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