The Seattle Times newspaper has joined the whiny call of liberals all over the country in calling for the elimination of the Electoral College used to choose our nation’s President.
As part of their argument for this voter disenfranchisement of their reader’s the Time’s Editors erroneously point out that the need which created the Electoral College in our Constitution in 1789 no longer exist. They correctly point our that it was part of a compromise to encourage smaller agrarian southern states to join the union when they were afraid of being dominated by the more populous northern states. That need for preventing domination of smaller states by larger states still exists. The geography has changed. But look no further than the 2016 election map results to see how dominating urban centers could be in our Presidential elections if not for the Electoral College.
While red indicates the counties that voted for Trump and blue indicates the counties that voted for Clinton, Clinton won the popular vote.
Time magazine reported that Trump won 2649 counties nationwide, while Clinton won 503. Were the U.S. to rely on the popular vote for electing our President the vast majority of the country would be serfs to the oligarchs in New York and Los Angeles.
I believe in the individual rights and liberty granted me by the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. And I defend those rights. It’s amazing to me why Democrats continually want to give away those rights. They want to give away our 2nd Amendment Rights to have guns. They increasingly want to eliminate our first Amendment Rights to Free speech by suppressing what words we can say and what hats (MAGA) we can wear. They want to continue to defile the intent of the 14th Amendment by giving away our citizenship to the children of illegal aliens born within our borders who maintain citizenship in the countries from which their parents came. They want to eliminate first Amendment Rights to religion by ostracizing those who practice it, especially Christians.
And because they don’t like Donald Trump they want to eliminate the Presidential voting rights of 95% of the country.
The argument for a nationwide popular vote rests on the myth that such a change would allow for 1 person, 1 vote. It’s a myth because of the human nature of group think and self-interest. Blacks tend to vote one way. Whites tend to vote another way. Men tend to vote a certain way. Women, Jews, Christians, Catholics etc. etc. A national popular vote would put our nations Presidency strictly in the hands of urban voters. More specifically it would put the Presidency strictly in the hands of New York and Los Angeles.
Thank God the Founding Fathers found the compromises necessary to create the Constitution. A lot of people in Wyoming, Delaware, Montana, Alaska, North and South Dakota and Vermont might resent only having a single representative in the U.S. House while California has 53, New York has 27, Texas 36, Florida 27, Pennsylvania 18, Illinois 18. Only 6 states make up 41% of the House. 15 states have 3 or fewer House Representatives. More than half the states, 26, have a total of only 77 Representatives or less than 18 percent of the House’s 435 members. As such the more populous states have a gigantic voting advantage over the less populous states.
If this isn’t all about hating Trump and its about 1 man 1 vote why wouldn’t they argue against our bicameral Congress? Why not eliminate the Senate? After all the small states get 2 votes there, same as the more populous states. To properly understand the wisdom of the Founding Fathers you have to understand the balance they had to achieve in order to form a more perfect union.
Ultimately this is a silly argument because eliminating the Electoral College would require a Constitutional Convention and ratification of any Amendments by 3/4 of the states. Fortunately, as pointed out here, a majority of the states are small and even if such a Convention took place and even if an Amendment were adopted (both of which are highly unlikely) there are not enough idiots who think we live in a Democracy throughout the smaller states to commit political suicide and totally disenfranchise their voters. It won’t happen. And we can thank God for it.
M Schuett blah blah blah 