Eroding the Electoral College Erodes Americans' Voting Rights
The structure of the American government was designed by the Founders to prevent raw majoritarianism: the three branches of government and their checks and balances, the allocation of power between the state and federal governments, constitutional limits on the federal government's power, the differing composition of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, and the Electoral College.
Leftists are doing everything they can to eliminate these safeguards and create a system where a bare majority will control every level of political power. The Electoral College is a particular target of their vitriol and machinations.
The U.S. Constitution provides that the president of the United States is elected not by a popular vote of the people but by the states. Each state has electors, the number of which is equal to the number of representatives in the U.S. House of Representatives (which is determined by the state's population, established every 10 years in the census). After a presidential election, each state's electors cast their votes for the candidate who has won a majority of the state's votes. (All but two states have a "winner-take-all" electoral vote system; Maine and Nebraska allocate electors roughly proportionately.) In theory, members of the Electoral College have the power to cast their votes for whichever candidate they choose. (And there have been loud calls for them to do so, in 2016 and again in 2020.) In practice, however, they have abided by the decision of the voters in their state.
The objection to the Electoral College arises largely from the fact that the victor in a presidential election can win despite losing the "popular vote," as has happened five times in U.S. history, including the 2000 and 2016 elections. This is pitched as some kind of grave injustice. But the Electoral College was designed precisely to protect and preserve the votes and voices of smaller, rural, less populated states.
Opponents of the Electoral College also claim it was put in place to protect slavery. But a quick review of history disproves that. The Constitution was adopted in 1789. In 1790, at the time of the first census, the states in ascending order of population were Southwest Territory, Delaware, Rhode Island, Kentucky, Georgia, Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Connecticut, South Carolina, New York, Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Of the 17 then-existing states, slave states were four of the top six most populous. Virginia alone held almost 20% of the country's entire population. By contrast, the bottom nine least populated states -- including New York -- were free states.
In other words, at the time it was created, the Electoral College protected the voting rights of less populated free states vis-a-vis the votes of the larger states where slavery was practiced.
Eliminating the Electoral College altogether would require a constitutional amendment, a process requiring either a convention of the states or passage by a two-thirds majority of both houses of Congress followed by ratification by three-quarters of all state legislatures (38 out of 50 at present).
However, those trying to change the method of electing the president have found another way: the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which was launched in 2006. States join the NPVIC by passing legislation by which they agree to allocate their Electoral College votes to the presidential candidate who receives the largest percentage of the popular vote -- even if that is not whom a majority of the state's own voters have chosen.
This week, Maine became the 17th state to pass legislation joining the NPVIC. (The District of Columbia has also passed legislation joining.) At this writing, the compact has 209 of the 270 votes needed to trigger its application in a presidential election.
The legislatures that have passed NPVIC legislation have effectively disenfranchised their own citizens, who should be irate that their votes will be cast aside because of what has transpired in other states.
...continued
Copyright 2024 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
