Posted on 12/19/2016 7:34:27 AM PST by VitacoreVision
On Saturday, October 27, an ABC News article asked, “Would Electoral Win Without Popular Vote be Swan Song for Swing States?”. The piece goes on to offer some scholarly opinions on “the pros and cons of our current Electoral College system.” One of those ivy tower denizens cited in the ABC News article is Alex Keyssar, a professor of history and social policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Keyssar sees the electoral college — particularly the way it functions in modern presidential elections — to be a “deformed version” of what the founders intended.
Professor Keyssar’s remedy for the irreparable damage being done to our nation by the two-party duopoly controlling presidential politics is to scrap the electoral college and award the White House to the candidate winning the majority of the popular vote. "My own view is that a popular vote system would make the institutions in this country keep up with changes that have been going on in the social fabric of the country for 200 years," Keyssar tells ABC News.
Politico offers another seemingly sarcastic solution: “The answer, of course, is for one of the candidates to win a clear Electoral College majority. We should all hope for that outcome, because the alternative could be a nightmare for our political system.”
ABC appears hopeful for the chaos that an electoral college collapse would cause when it recounts a bit of recent history of the effort to supplant the electoral college with a popular vote count:
There is an effort — Natonal Popular Vote — which has been ratified by eight states, to basically create a legal agreement among states to keep the electoral college, but award the votes proportionally instead of by state.
But it isn't a Constitutional amendment and there are concerns that a broad agreement by some states would violate the Constitution.
An article published on a Justia blog predicts that a Romney electoral college loss combined with a popular vote win could energize the efforts to neuter the electoral college.
Because up until now, all of the states that have adopted the NPV bill have been Blue states — states that are generally assumed to lean towards the Democratic, rather than the Republican, candidate for President. And unless a Red state joins soon, it will become increasingly hard to debunk the (wrongheaded) fear that Red state folks have that the National Popular Vote bill is a Democratic scheme, rather than a democratic idea.
Keyssar’s comments and ABC’s commentary that the electoral college is outmoded and not “keep[ing] up with changes” in society, is very similar to a statement from a December 2008 Wall Street Journal op-ed piece written by Jonathan Soros, son of globalist financier George Soros. In the article, Soros insists that the election of the President by the method established by the Constitution of 1787 is “antidemocratic by design.” “The Constitution is no longer in line with our expectations regarding the role of the people in selecting the President,” he said.
Paradoxically — almost certainly unintentionally — Keyssar and Soros are right, but for the wrong reasons. The prevailing spirit of the Constitution is antidemocratic and is so by the very deliberate and express design of the framers thereof.
Witness the response by the Nestor of the Convention, Benjamin Franklin, to an inquiry made by a passerby as he left the State House in Philadelphia. As the story is told, a young woman approached the renowned scientist and diplomat and asked, “Well, Dr. Franklin, what have you done for us?” Franklin responded soberly, “My dear lady, we have given to you a republic — if you can keep it.” Dr. Franklin was speaking the truth. Article IV, Section 4 of the document he helped craft over that hot summer mandates that “the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.”
As to the preferability of a republic (a government of law) over a democracy, we may turn to the reliable words of the man known to history as the “Father of the Constitution,” James Madison, who preferred a republic. In Federalist Number 10, Madison wrote that a republic is able to “refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice, will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations.” But “democracies,” he said, based on his study of history, “have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”
A very vital aspect of the republican frame upon which our federal government is built is the so-called Electoral College. Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution sets forth the manner by which the President is to be chosen: “Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress.”
The remaining instructions for presidential elections given in Article II were altered by the 12th Amendment. In relevant portion, that amendment reads: “The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President.... The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed.”
A simple formula: States appoint electors; electors cast votes for president (and vice president); the candidate receiving the most votes wins (provided it be a majority of the total number of votes cast by the electors). Not only that, but the electors would actually deliberate on who the best candidate would be before casting their votes. This is of course a far cry from what the Electoral College has become in practice, where the entire delegation of electors for a particular state is expected to vote as a block for whoever wins the popular vote for president in that state.
Despite the simplicity of the system originally intended by the Founding Fathers, however, there are those, such as Messrs. Soros and Keyssar, who are not impressed, and they do not share the Founders’ fear of the insinuation of democracy into the government of the United States. These opponents of the Electoral College prefer a more democratic method of electing the president. In fact, as mentioned above, the ABC News article reports that eight states have passed bills that would scrap the Electoral College in all but name and convert the election of the president of the United States into a purely democratic process. This legislative effort is known as the National Popular Vote (NPV) compact.
For a more complete analysis of the constitutional issues surrounding a national popular vote, please read the next part in this series. Part 2 will be published Tuesday, October 30; part 3, Wednesday, October 31.
Related articles:
National Popular Vote: Progress or Problem? (Part 2 of 3)
Popular Election of President: A Constitutional Consideration (Part 3 of 3)
I’d prefer to have each state get ONE vote; this is more in line with founder’s views than mob rule democracy as proposed by author.
Our American Oligarchy of Government and high Finance will never do away with the exercise of supposedly free elections - they provide legitimacy to whichever insider they choose to put up.
But they do want to make the outcomes of elections even more predictable and manageable, and the electoral college is a thorn in their side.
The electoral college cannot be put on any chopping block short of a constitutional amendment. The Constitution requires an electoral system for electing the President and there is only ONE way to legitimately and validly change the Constitution: NOT from the SCOTUS bench, NOT by calling it “a living document” - ONLY by a constitutional amendment.
Sour grapes from the ivory tower
No more so than a close popular vote.
The electoral system cannot be put on any chopping block short of a constitutional amendment. The Constitution requires an electoral system for electing the President and there is only ONE way to legitimately and validly change the Constitution: NOT from the SCOTUS bench, NOT by calling it “a living document” - ONLY by a constitutional amendment.
And oh by the way, the electoral system is a well-conceived implementation of our republican (representative), NOT democratic (tyranny of the majority) from of government. The electoral system is way better than anything the Lying Leftist Tyrants who hate freedom and limited government want to come up with.
False meme that the dense population centers represent the "social fabric of the country".
But, as we all know, without false memes, the Left would have no argument to offer....
It failed last time it was tried, couldn’t pass in the Senate with a 2/3rds majority.
A proposed amendment becomes part of the Constitution as soon as it is ratified by three-fourths of the States (38 of 50 States).
https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution IOW, it ain't gonna happen!
Just look at the map showing the voting in this election. Based on popular vote, Hillary would have been elected by just a few states and metropolitan areas. Large parts of the country and whole states even Texas would be totally irrelevant to winning the election.
Public support for the EC has gone UP dramatically since Trump’s win (source: Gallup Poll)
The States elect the President, not the people.
The way to tell if an argument is full of cr*p is to turn the situation around....
Trump wins the popular vote but Hillary wins the electoral vote...would these experts still have the same view?
Or an even better question...would the subject even come up?
The answer, of course not.
The left knows there power is in the big cities, they can control the message and the votes. Not so much in fly over country. So they want to change the rules so only they will ever win.
Constitutional Amendments require ratification by 3/4 of the states, which is 38 states.
So to abolish the EC through a new Constitutional amendment, would require all 17 large states, plus 21 of the 33 smaller states to join them
You betcha, I can certainly understand why the 7 smallest states that have 3 EV's each, would gladly give up 2/3 of their power and be reduced from 3 EVs to 1 EV each, don't you? And the 5 states with 4 EV's would love to see their influence halved from 4 to 2 EVs each. Two states with 5 EV's go from 5 to 3, and six states with 6 EVs go from 6 to 4.
Yup, I can just totally see swarms of small states give up one of the few political leverages they still have, can't you?
A Democrat President might “repeal” the 12th Amendment by EO but getting all those states to repeal it is not assured of success.
At one time the individual states of The United States were autonomous countries, they were simply a confederation of countries or states during the revolution.
After the revolution the states made a permanent confederation by the means of a Constitution. The fear prior to the ratifying of the constitution was that the large states like New York would overwhelm the smaller states like Massachusetts and that the larger states would forever dominate the smaller states so that there would be no value in confederation by the smaller states. This fear was overcome by two means, one, the Senate having equal representation by each state and two, the electoral college with each state having at least three electors.
If we were to do away with the electoral college then New York and California would dominate the presidential elections with Florida and Texas having influence but no control.
The current system with the original Senators being chosen by the legislators of each state was a genius solution and would still work if not for the 17th amendment which gave the election of Senators to the popular vote of the citizens of each state. Nearly all of the laws that weaken the republican form of the union can be traced back to the 17th amendment. There is nothing now that protects the states except the 10th amendment which is never enforced because without the force of the 10th amendment the Senate (referred to as the upper chamber) has nearly unlimited power to serve themselves. Evil.
Eliminate the Electoral Vote and all Americans become slaves to the major cities as they seek to extend their corruption and failed programs. I escaped the DC area and now reside in two small town communities. Both communities are very different from the DC area in a positive way. To attempt to put DC policies into either community would be a major culture shock and would be met with resistance.
I respectfully disagree with your one vote per state; although I agree with the way the electorial college is currently set up, changing it like that would give too much power to the small states, and take too much away from the populous states.
The rules should be fair, rather then “let’s do what’s best for our side.”
No!
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