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.
How can they 'remember' what they haven't been taught?
The World Series requires that a team win four games out of seven no matter the scores of the individual games. Consider the 1960 World Series. The Pittsburgh Pirates went up against the New York Yankees. The series was won by Pittsburgh with a walk-off home run by Bill Mazeroski in the ninth inning of the seventh game even though the Yankees scored more total runs.
The Yankees won three games with the following scores: 16–3, 10–0, and 12–0. The Pirates won four games with these scores: 6–4, 3–2, 5–2, and 10–9. In addition, the Yankees “outhit them 91–60, outbatted them .338 to .256, hit 10 home runs to Pittsburgh’s four (three of which came in Game 7), got two complete-game shutouts from Whitey Ford — and lost.” (Wikipedia)
The series total was 55 runs for the Yankees and 27 runs for the Pirates. In the final analysis, it didn’t matter that the Yankees scored more total runs. Danny Murtaugh, the Pirate’s manager, got it right when he said: “I looked in the rule book and it said the Series will be decided on games won, not on runs scored.”
In the morning papers before the final game “quoted Yankees stars Mantle and Roger Maris as saying the Yankees were still the better team, even if the Pirates somehow managed to win Game 7.” (ESPN) Sound familiar? even if they lost, they still won.
http://constitution.com/electoral-college-difference-super-bowl-world-series/
"Those who fail to learn from history..."
“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.”
I don’t understand that. Could someone help me with an explanation?
Senators were originally appointed by their respective States, not elected.
“Senators were originally appointed by their respective States, not elected.”
I got that, but how does that “destroy one of the Founders’ initial checks on an excessive federal government by destroying the states’ veto power over the federal government”?
Appointed Senators are not elected, they were appointed to represent the State’s interest only. They were not popularly elected and were not prone to the populist swings of opinion present in the House. The House originated Bills, the State appointed Senators had veto power over them.
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