Like Clockwork: Electoral College

Just as surely as day follows night, every election for President is followed by the plaintiff cry, “Abolish the electoral college!” That plaint is always from the losing side, ironically. Or not. Only this year, the screed preceded events by appearing on the day before the election. (11/2 Tennessean) Was that a premonition of loss? We will know by the time you read this, probably.

I recall this argument being waged in the early 1960's. Same arguments, only different sides. Then the Republicans feared losing the electoral college vote to the “big states” after winning the popular vote. And that exact thing happened, not considering contested and fraudulent ballots, in the 2016 election. Only to the other side.

And the actual “justifications” for changing are exactly the same. The article referenced above presents a couple of the arguments. First, “Supporters say the measure would force candidates to campaign in states that today are often taken for granted because they vote so reliably Democrat or Republican that they can be safely ignored.”

And a “popular election” would remedy this, how? The “states that are often taken for granted,” would only receive candidate attention if they were among the most populous. And that is, not many, in fact. Candidates would concentrate on population centers to the exclusion of rural areas. So the “solution” to the problem of ignoring some areas, is to ignore other areas.

The second argument is that a major portion of the population is disenfranchised by a President for which they did not vote. Well, wake up, Buttercup. That happens in every election that has ever been held. Except for the ones in totalitarian countries that routinely offer only one candidate. These are “big boy” elections. Someone wins and someone loses. Interestingly, in kiddie games where no score is kept to avoid branding anyone a loser, the kids–and often parents–keep score in their heads and everyone knows who “won” and who “lost.”

These Presidential elections are not “one man, one vote.” And again, I quote the author of the article. “Unlike most elections in the U.S., the presidency is decided not directly by voters, but by members of the Electoral College, who are assigned based on the results of the popular vote in each state.

And that was the exact intent of the founding fathers. The general population chooses the Senators and Congressmen and women. The judiciary is appointed by the elected officials, and the President is elected by the States. “But that ain’t fair!” Well, on a partisan decision based on numbers of voters, that may be correct. But that can and does change. The Republicans were the most populous party in the 1950's and 60's.

State representation does not change. There are 50 votes. Well, not really. The system is an ingenious hybrid of absolute state equality with population numbers factored into the system. Every “explanation” for the imbalance in “voter representation” by electoral votes, includes the number of Senators assigned to each state. If we compared the “electoral college voting” representation calculated on 435, we would find that each electoral vote represents substantially an identical number of the population–not actual voters, incidentally. And that might be another issue to pursue. 

If we are truly interested in “one man, one vote,” oops, “one person, one vote,” then electoral college votes should be apportioned on the basis of how many people actually voted in any individual state. But I digress.

The solution proposed by the article in question was to institute the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact which gives each states’ electoral vote to the winner of the popular vote. Then every election would result in a 535-0 election. Voila! Problem solved!

Except for one small matter. The original complaint was that large portions of the population have their votes annulled by the Electoral College. So to resolve that problem we will annul the votes of a different portion of the population. 

And old beer commercial had some guy proposing some common-sense idea, with his partner exclaiming, “Brilliant!” The only thing “brilliant” about this proposal is that it will deliver the candidate preferred by the writer.

Actually, the Founding Fathers were “brilliant,” excuse the reference to a beer commercial, in balancing population centers with the vast areas of rural enterprise. A cursory look at a map displaying voting patterns illustrates this. Vast areas of red cover the preponderance of the country with blue dots interspersed, coincidentally, at the population centers of the east and west coast and minimal spots throughout “flyover” country.

The Electoral College, instead of threatening our republic, strengthens it. (By the way, the United States is a Republic, not a democracy. And that is another topic for another day.)

May the USA win.