Posted on 12/15/2016 7:45:45 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Because Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College, there are now voices clamoring for America to abandon the Electoral College and become a pure democracy with the winner of the presidential election by popular vote.
Not a good idea. In fact it is a very bad idea. Americans should remember that the United States is not a democracy — it is a federated form of government where the role of the federal government is limited to delegated powers by the Founders. This action was then solidified by the 10th Amendment that declares “The powers not delegated to the United States (federal government) by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
America’s Electoral College system was established by the Founding Fathers following a long and contentious debate between the large and small states during the Constitutional Convention in 1787. This contentious debate led to the adoption of electors over a populous vote.
The Founders then inserted the Electoral College system into Article II of the Constitution. While the 12th Amendment modified the original Constitution’s language, the 20th Amendment, which was ratified in 1933, contains the language that governs today’s elections. The naming of electors was not changed, and is still in use today for very powerful reasons. To change the Electoral College system would require a Constitutional amendment. This would be very hard to do and it is not likely to happen.
One of Mike Byrd’s recent breakfast speakers was an advocate for changing the Constitution to allow the popular vote to replace the Electoral College. Due to illness, I was not able to attend this meeting and express my continuing support of the Constitution’s Electoral College to elect our presidents.
The initial Constitution provided that each U.S. Senator was to be elected by a state’s legislature. But because a few very wealthy Americans began to buy their U.S. Senate seat believing that the Senate was a prestigious position equivalent to England’s House of Lords. This growing corruption scandal of the Founders’ initial intent led to the adoption of the 17th Amendment that became law on April 8, 1913. The adoption of the 17th Amendment destroyed one of the Founders’ initial checks on an excessive federal government by destroying the states’ veto power over the federal government — by electing their U.S. senators with a popular vote.
The wisdom of the Founding Fathers in adopting the electors system was exemplified during the recent election. Under the Electoral College system, Trump won 31 of the 50 states, including nearly all of rural America, with 306 electoral votes. Had the popular vote been used in this recent election the vast majority of Americans would have been disenfranchised, being outvoted by the larger states, especially California.
An in-depth review of the recent election shows that if the California vote was deducted from the popular vote, Trump would have won the popular vote with 57,113,976 votes, versus Clinton’s 54,978,783 with Trump having 51.3 percent of the popular vote to Clinton’s 48.7 percent of the vote. Thus Clinton was elected president of California and Trump was elected president of the rest of the county, by a substantial margin. This again exemplifies the wisdom of the Founding Fathers for selecting the Electoral College over the popular vote to prevent the vote of one state from overriding the vote of the other states.
And then when one considers that California allows anyone with a driver’s license to vote, including undocumented immigrants, California has no controls in place to keep non-citizens from voting. The more I learn about the popular vote, the more I admire the wisdom of America’s Founding Fathers for choosing the Electoral College over the popular vote for America’s presidential elections.
Thus, if America would change to the popular vote, presidential candidates would only need to campaign in a few of the more populist states to win, leaving the rest of America voiceless. The Founding Fathers never cease to amaze me with their foresight and wisdom. Most of the Founders believed they were inspired by the Supreme Judge of the world (God) in their deliberations. This quote by James Madison reflects those beliefs of the Founders: “The belief in a God, All Powerful wise and good, is so essential to the moral order of the World and to the happiness of man ...” I believe it was more than the wisdom of 55 men; I believe these men were divinely inspired as Madison strongly implies in the about quote.
PING!
Populist or populous? This gent needs an editor.
The witch won the popular vote? Who knew? Last I checked, she won 48% (less if you figure in the illegal, dead, multiple, mickey, daffy, popeye, etc. votes) and the rest of the ticket won 52%.
52+48= 100 correct?
Bookmark
Catherine the Great was Czar at the time of the revolution. She was considered ahead of her time. :)
And then, they unloaded Alaska on us.
> It was also well known that Russian agents infiltrated the Philadelphia convention and helped to design the electoral college so that Trump could win more than 200 years later.
Proof that Putin acquired a time machine in 1984 from Doc Brown.
Go do a survey of Americans of any age, any educational level, and ask the question: “Is the United States a democracy?”.
There’s the problem.
B@st@rds!
That is probably correct, but what I find even more telling is that if one counts the results at the county level Trump beat her 5-1 (2626-487).
Scoring the contest at the county level would seem more effective than using the Electoral College if one's goal is to reflect the character of the entire nation.
Low-information ordinary citizens evidently do not understand that the federal spending programs that they have foolishly traded their votes for and become dependent on are actually based on state powers and state revenues that the corrupt fed have stolen from the states by means of unconstitutional federal taxes.
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.
Patriots need to work with Trump to either politically “force” the feds to surrender powers that the feds have stolen from the states back to the states, or amend the Constitution to expressly give the feds the specific powers to tax and spend for such programs.
"The States should be left to do whatever acts they can do as well as the General Government." --Thomas Jefferson to John Harvie, 1790.
The 12th Amendment, not the 20th, governs Presidential elections. Section 3 of the 20th Amendment deals with if there are problems between the time when the Electoral College votes and Inauguration Day, but does not effect the Electoral College.
That is because of 12 years of brainwashing in the public skools——being told we are a democracy over and over and over and it becomes the “truth” tp the braindead. Obama tells us that OVER and OVER —and so do the Republicans most of the time. It is a LIE-—we are a Constitutional Republic which does NOT believe in mob tyranny of the minority/individual=democracy.
Can you imagine the gerrymandering? Every block in every major city would be considered a county.
They don’t know what a democracy is, either. Thus the greater problem.
Y You're correct, he should have used populous, not populist.
Thus, if America would change to the popular vote, presidential candidates would only need to campaign in a few of the more populous states to win, leaving the rest of America voiceless.
Moonbats in Los Angeles and New York, and millions of illegal aliens in those cities, would determine the presidential election. No thanks.
Donald Trump: The Echo of Our Framers' Uncorrupted President.
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