Here's Why John F. Kennedy Once Passionately Argued To Keep The Electoral College

Townhall.com ^ | March 21, 2019 | Scott Morefield

[Kaslin]

The days of New York City’s Tammany Hall and the Windy City’s “Chicago Machine” may be technically over, but that doesn’t mean Democrats have given up trying to rig and steal elections in a neverending power grab that would make Mayor Daley blush. Not by a long shot. In fact, you can bet the farm that virtually any cockamamie proposal put out there by anyone with a D beside their name is specifically designed to do one thing and one thing alone - get votes. 

Oh, I know they like to pretend they’re all about “virtue” and “values” and helping the “disenfranchised,” the downtrodden, and the disaffected, but these modern day Bolsheviks have “more power” scrubbed into their DNA, and it defines EVERYTHING they do.

So it is with their recent calls to abolish the electoral college, a system carefully put in place by our nation’s founders not only to ensure the individual States joined the Union in the first place, but also, not unlike the Senate, to ensure the will of the minority didn’t get trampled by the majority. 

Even so, that darned electoral college cost the “good guys” not one, but two elections in the past two decades alone, so it must be banished to the dustbin of history right along with capitalism and fracking. Every Democratic candidate from Elizabeth Warren to Beto “Wax My Ass” O’Rourke has called for it, and most of the American people actually think the idea sounds pretty reasonable. And maybe it does, in theory at least.

However, as President Trump tweeted last week, enacting such a system would mean “the cities would end up running the country. Smaller States & the entire Midwest would end up losing all power.” Trump said he once liked “the idea of the Popular Vote,” but now understands “the Electoral College is far better.”

To be sure, Trump has skin in the game, having won the electoral college and “lost” the so-called “popular vote.” But others have weighed in as well throughout history, including none other than then-Senator John F. Kennedy, who in 1956 called the idea “one of the most far-reaching, and I believe mistaken-schemes ever proposed to alter the American constitutional system.”

Kennedy was responding on the Senate floor to SJR 31, a “follow-up to what was originally labeled the Lodge-Gossett proposal,” author and law professor Robert Hardaway told me for a piece I wrote on the topic over at The Daily Caller. Essentially, it was a proposal that would have abolished the electoral college in favor of a national popular vote.

According to the Congressional Record, Kennedy praised our current system as one in which “third parties and splinter parties are effectively discouraged from playing more than a negligible role.”

“Today we have an electoral vote system which gives both large States and small States certain advantages and disadvantages that offset each other,” he said on the Senate floor. “Now it is proposed that we change all this. What the effects of these various changes will be on the Federal system, the two-party system, the popular plurality system, and the large-State small-State checks and balances system, no one knows.”

In part of his speech, Kennedy even quoted James Madison: “This government is not completely consolidated, nor is it entirely federal … Who are the parties to it? The people, not as the people comprising one great body, but the people comprising 13 sovereignties.” 

Hardaway, a law professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law and the author of the upcoming book “Saving the Electoral College: Why the National Popular Vote Would Undermine Democracy,” compared Macron’s win in 2017’s French elections to what Democrats would like to install in the U.S. To the professor, the French “were given the choice between two candidates opposed by the vast majority of French voters.” Similarly, had there been a national popular vote, Hardaway contends, Ross Perot very could have won the 1992 election, were it held when he was polling at 33 percent.

To be sure, there are arguments even from conservatives, like this one from Townhall’s Matt Vespa, for why instituting a national popular vote may not necessarily mean the end of conservatives winning national elections. 

Even so, I agree with JFK. Though far from perfect, our founders had it right on this one. We’re already at a point where Democrats can win by essentially dominating a few small areas into which they can mass program their sick ideology. A national popular vote would take what small voice more rural citizens have away from them entirely, subjecting the rest of us to the will of people who do not share our values, our culture, or our way of life. 

In other words, if you want to hasten the already progressing “coming apart” of America, institute a national popular vote.

[KSCITYBOY]

btt

[zeestephen]

Re: “There are arguments even from conservatives for why instituting a national popular vote may not necessarily mean the end of conservatives winning national elections.”

Have those arguments studied the last seven presidential elections?

I think not.

Just one GOP nominee has received a popular vote majority since 1988.

George W. Bush got 50.7% in 2004.

[Tallguy]

Well, JFK had skin in the game, too. He clearly understood that his future election would be a close one. And if Daddy’s friends could deliver Chicago, he’d get Illinois’ EV’s.

[Right Wing Assault]

It would make things a lot easier for candidates. They just have to visit the few important large states where the race is close and can ignore everyone else. Not much money will be spent in those little states. The only reason a candidate might show up is to put in a good word for some locals who are in a close race.

[Deplorable American1776]

JFK would not be a Dem today. He’d be a a RINO today.

[Wuli]

Neither a nation, much less a republic, as large as the United States can long survive as a nation on mere “national popular vote” majorities by which the interests of majorities of the distinct regional parts that make up the nation are disrespected, discarded, over ruled, crushed.

The “national popular vote” will DIVIDE FURTHER, not “unite” the nation, and only how long it remains a nation will remain in doubt, not that it will survive - it won’t.

[DesertRhino]

Rino hell, he’d be to the far right of almost every repub who ran in the 2016 election.
You see little Marco as more conservative? Jeb? Fiorina?
Or McCain, W Bush, Romney etc?

Time to face facts. The Republican party of this era is to the left of the Democrat Party 1963

[DesertRhino]

Rino hell, he’d be to the far right of almost every repub who ran in the 2016 election.
You see little Marco as more conservative? Jeb? Fiorina?
Or McCain, W Bush, Romney etc?

Time to face facts. The Republican party of this era is to the left of the Democrat Party 1963

[SunkenCiv]

1950: The Lodge-Gossett Amendment, named for its co-sponsors Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (R-MA) and Rep. Ed Gossett (D-TX), was a classic example of a reform plan known as proportional allocation. The plan was introduced in the 81st Congress (1949-1950) as an amendment proposal that would abolish the Electoral College as it was known, replacing it with a proportional electoral vote.

In this case, electors and the college would remain in place, but electoral votes would be allocated to presidential tickets in a manner directly proportional to the popular votes each ticket received in the states. The proposal was amended in the Senate to also require a 40% threshold of electoral votes for a ticket to be elected to the Presidency and Vice Presidency. If no one received such a threshold, the Senate and the House of Representatives, in a joint session, would then choose among the top two presidential candidates and their running mates.

The Lodge-Gossett Amendment passed the Senate with a super majority by a vote of 64-27, but died a bitter death in the House. [source]

Saint Jack was genuinely worried about truth and justice and fairness -- either that or he was worried about the loss of Demwit control of the White House and both houses of congress. Thanks Kaslin.

[Chode]

the popular vote is two wolfs and a sheep deciding whats for dinner...

[1FreeAmerican]

[Albion Wilde]

bump

[SunkenCiv]

The (nine largest) states of California, Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Georgia, and North Carolina add up to 222 votes in the House, and adding in the number of Senators shows the Electoral count at 240. The Electoral College consists not of 535, but of 538 electors -- under the 23rd Amendment of the Constitution, the District of Columbia is allocated 3 electors and treated like a state for purposes of the Electoral College. Because that's an even number (nice amending, asswipes!), a majority of 270 electoral votes is required. Add in Michigan (13+2) and New Jersey (12+2) and it's just one vote short of the 270. Add Virginia (11+2) and ta-dah -- the twelve largest states are enough. The reality is, these twelve states are not going to vote monolithically for the same candidate.

NPV (sounds like a sexually transmitted disease, don't you think?) is a state-by-state measure that, when the number of electoral votes reaches or exceeds 270, goes into effect in all states which pass it. It's been enacted into (so far non-functioning) law in California, Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. In Delaware it is awaiting the gov's signature, and it was been passed by one or the other house in a few other states.

It isn't really much of a reform, and even if it passes in time for the 2020 election (my guess is, it will eventually die on the vine, dangling out there like some of the proposed but unratified Constitutional amendments) it's probably going to bite the Demagogic Party in the ass -- imagine the gnashing of teeth and lamentations when ALL of California's electoral votes HAVE TO be cast for President Trump...

[SunkenCiv]

	House	Subtotal	Senate	Electoral Subtotal
California	53	53	2	55
Texas	36	89	4	93
Florida	27	116	6	122
New York	27	143	8	151
Pennsylvania	18	161	10	171
Illinois	18	179	12	191
Ohio	16	195	14	209
Georgia	14	209	16	225
North Carolina	13	222	18	240
Michigan	14	236	20	256
New Jersey	12	248	22	270
Virginia	11	259	24	283
Washington	10	269	26	295
Arizona	9	278	28	306
Massachusetts	9	287	30	317
Tennessee	9	296	32	328
Indiana	9	305	34	339
Missouri	8	313	36	349
Maryland	8	321	38	359
Wisconsin	8	329	40	369
Colorado	7	336	42	378
Minnesota	8	344	44	388
South Carolina	7	351	46	397
Alabama	7	358	48	406
Louisiana	6	364	50	414
Kentucky	6	370	52	422
Oregon	5	375	54	429
Oklahoma	5	380	56	436
Connecticut	5	385	58	443
Iowa	4	389	60	449
Utah	4	393	62	455
Arkansas	4	397	64	461
Nevada	4	401	66	467
Mississippi	4	405	68	473
Kansas	4	409	70	479
New Mexico	3	412	72	484
Nebraska	3	415	74	489
West Virginia	3	418	76	494
Idaho	2	420	78	498
Hawaii	2	422	80	502
New Hampshire	2	424	82	506
Maine	2	426	84	510
Rhode Island	2	428	86	514
Montana	1	429	88	517
Delaware	1	430	90	520
South Dakota	1	431	92	523
North Dakota	1	432	94	526
Alaska	1	433	96	529
Vermont	1	434	98	532
Wyoming	1	435	100	535
District of Columbia (has no vote in the House or Senate)	1	436	102	538
Puerto Rico (has no vote in the House, Senate, or EC)	1