Back in 2016, when the election results were announced and the faces of many thousands of millennials crashed so heavily that the resulting thud registered on some seismic meters as small local quakes, there was an overheated argument going on in the media about why the electoral college should/should not be eliminated.
It has to do with representation.
James Madison, the primary architect of the Constitution, and the other representatives believed that the electors would be able to insure that only a qualified person becomes President. They believed that with an Electoral College, no one would be able to manipulate the citizenry. It would act as a check on an electorate that might be duped.
Madison and the others did not trust the population to make the right choice. The delegates to the Constitutional Convention believed that the Electoral College had the advantage of being a group that met only once and thus could not be manipulated over time by foreign governments or others. In view of how things have gone in the past two years, these people – Madison, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, et al., had enormous foresight.
The electoral college is part of the compromises made at the Constitutional Convention to satisfy the small states. Under the system of the Electoral College, each state had the same number of electoral votes as they have Representatives (not Senators) in Congress, therefore, no state could have less than 3. The result of this system is that in the 2016 election, the state of Wyoming casts about 210,000 votes, and thus each elector represented 70,000 votes, while in California approximately 9,700,000 votes were cast for 54 votes, representing 179,000 votes per elector. Does this create an unfair advantage to voters in the small states whose votes actually count more than those of people living in medium and large states? Yes, and they were very aware of it from the beginning.
The Founding Fathers, the creators of our Constitution, did not want direct election to the Presidency. They were deeply concerned that a tyrant could manipulate public opinion and come to power through the popular vote. And how often have we seen that in the 19th and 20th centuries? Yes, and there’s a long list I could show you. They saw it happen in France in 1789. We saw it happen in Russia 100 years ago, and in Germany barely 87 years in the past. And we’ve come close, as well, a couple of times.
Since the electoral college votes are given in their entirety to the majority winner of the state ballot count in elections, the result is that one state with 10 electoral votes may tip the balance toward a specific candidate. We saw this in November 2016, in which the weeping and wailing in the outer darkness of losing a contest showed up on TV screens everywhere.
The electoral vote is always determined by a simple majority count of 2 votes. A candidate may win the popular vote but lose the electoral vote, as happened more than once in presidential elections and happened again in our most recent presidential race. The winner-take-all method used in electoral voting was decided by the states themselves. This trend took place over the course of the 19th century as America grew in size, volume and frontiers. The total number of electoral votes is, in keeping with the growth of this country, 538, of which 270 form the 2-vote simple majority that determines who is elected President of these United States.
Now the Democrats are casting their eyes on changing our equal representation in the Senate because – well, it cuts into their power structure. https://reason.com/blog/2018/10/08/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-we-should-elimi
That attention-grabbing person from NYC, Ocasio-Cortez, says the electoral college is ‘a shadow of slavery’s power’, and should be eliminated. Well, no, it is not. That statement very clearly shows her ignorance and her complete lack of understanding of the history of our Constitution and our government, never mind our country.
Her companions on this journey of destruction say the same thing about the Senate – equal representation in one House of Congress is somehow undemocratic. Well, you bet your bippy it is. The framers of the Constitution knew that all along. They were forced into that corner 1787 for a good reason.
We have two (2) Senators from each state, period. This has to do with the original design of the US Constitution. From the beginning, small states said that they would not accept proportional representation in the Senate, the way it is structured in the House of Representatives. James Madison and the other large-state delegates didn’t take the objections of the small-state delegates seriously. They refused the ‘equal or nothing’ terms.
So what happened? The small states got up and walked out. They went on strike. Unless they got equal representation in the Senate, they would in fact assure the failure of the Constitutional Convention and damn the consequences. Compromise, or there will be no Constitution.
The Articles of Confederation gave states equal sovereignty, regardless of their size. The small states would not accept being viewed as lesser entities. Thus, the U.S. Constitution was written as it stands today, because the Small States stood up to the Big Guys and said “Not just no, but hell, no.”
The House of Representatives gives us proportional representation, and determines how many electoral votes each state has: XXX for Representatives.
The Senate allows equal representation with 2 Senators in the US Senate for all states, regardless of size.
The only way to change any of this is to trash the US Constitution and start over. Popular voting through proportional representation is what gave us the electoral college in the first place, in which the majority winner in each state takes all the votes. The foresight of the framers of the Constitution was not just sharply focused, but also accurate and has certainly withstood the test of time.
The problem is that the Lefterds seem to be demonstrating their complete ignorance of the Law of the Land, in addition to an utter lack of class and respect for others, which are the rule now with them instead of the exception. They are, in fact, annoying so many people who might vote Democrat that these other people are considering their other options.
It’s that old Newtonian rule again: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Most of us learned to lose at home, in grade school and on the playing fields of school sports.
These bad mannered, obnoxious, disrespectful spoiled brats and sore losers want to throw our Constitution out the window, not just change it, so that they can have their way.
Tough bananas. They will just have to learn to lose gracefully.
