Posted on 10/17/2018 6:41:20 AM PDT by Kaslin
Democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, seeking to represent New York's 14th Congressional District, has called for the abolition of the Electoral College. Her argument came on the heels of the Senate's confirming Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. She was lamenting the fact that Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, nominated by George W. Bush, and Justices Neil Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, nominated by Donald Trump, were court appointments made by presidents who lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College vote.
Hillary Clinton has long been a critic of the Electoral College. Just recently, she wrote in The Atlantic, "You won't be surprised to hear that I passionately believe it's time to abolish the Electoral College."
Subjecting presidential elections to the popular vote sounds eminently fair to Americans who have been miseducated by public schools and universities. Worse yet, the call to eliminate the Electoral College reflects an underlying contempt for our Constitution and its protections for personal liberty. Regarding miseducation, the founder of the Russian Communist Party, Vladimir Lenin, said, "Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted." His immediate successor, Josef Stalin, added, "Education is a weapon whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed."
A large part of Americans' miseducation is the often heard claim that we are a democracy. The word "democracy" appears nowhere in the two most fundamental documents of our nation -- the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. In fact, our Constitution -- in Article 4, Section 4 -- guarantees "to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government." The Founding Fathers had utter contempt for democracy. James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 10, said that in a pure democracy, "there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual." At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Virginia Gov. Edmund Randolph said that "in tracing these evils to their origin, every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy." John Adams wrote: "Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide." At the Constitutional Convention, Alexander Hamilton said: "We are now forming a republican government. Real liberty" is found not in "the extremes of democracy but in moderate governments. ... If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy."
For those too dense to understand these arguments, ask yourselves: Does the Pledge of Allegiance say "to the democracy for which it stands" or "to the republic for which it stands"? Did Julia Ward Howe make a mistake in titling her Civil War song "Battle Hymn of the Republic"? Should she have titled it "Battle Hymn of the Democracy"?
The Founders saw our nation as being composed of sovereign states that voluntarily sought to join a union under the condition that each state admitted would be coequal with every other state. The Electoral College method of choosing the president and vice president guarantees that each state, whether large or small in area or population, has some voice in selecting the nation's leaders. Were we to choose the president and vice president under a popular vote, the outcome of presidential races would always be decided by a few highly populated states. They would be states such as California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois and Pennsylvania, which contain 134.3 million people, or 41 percent of our population. Presidential candidates could safely ignore the interests of the citizens of Wyoming, Alaska, Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Delaware. Why? They have only 5.58 million Americans, or 1.7 percent of the U.S. population. We would no longer be a government "of the people"; instead, our government would be put in power by and accountable to the leaders and citizens of a few highly populated states.
Political satirist H.L. Mencken said, "The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic."
If the electoral college were abolished all of the states with American majorities should form one mega-state - it would have a lot of leverage, as it would feed the coastal elites.
America is a democracy but not necessarily a popular one; rather a geographical one comprised of actual popular democracies.
Anything that interferes with the Democrat’s right to be in command is a “threat to Democracy.”
I don’t see any “debate”.
Just a bunch of people crying because they lost.
Jimmy Carter was pushing to abolish it, until it was pointed out to him that there were scenarios whereby that would not necessarily work in the Democrats’ favor.
Today, with CA, NY, IL becoming blue megastates it no doubt would.
Without the electoral college, we will become the Hunger Games. The bigger states will control the rest of the country.
We are a Republic.
It is a useless debate. It’s not going anywhere.
I just try to explain it to kids (those under 30) this way: The US is kind of like the EU. They were envisioned as a bunch of mostly sovereign countries under the umbrella of a single constitution. the only reasons the FedGov really exists is to protect the collecive states from outside attack, protect the states from each other, enforce laws when lawbreakers move between states and ensure that all states protect their citizens rights within the umbrella of the constitution and bill of rights.
And the FedGov is not a democracy. It is a constitutional republic. Voters don’t elect presidents. The states do. That is why we have an electoral college. Each state gens a certain number of electors based on the number of senators and congressmen. And they all get two votes for their number of senators (because they all have two senators. It is a way of somewhat equalizing their voices while still giving populous states more voice than low population states.
If it was just based on popular vote, most states would have no vote at all, effectively.
“I don’t see any “debate”.
Just a bunch of people crying because they lost.”
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True. Rarely, if ever, do you hear the winners cry over the EC.
If they want to shut down the electoral college fine, just break everything up into congressional districts and call it good, no more winner take all. Most districts win! Democrats will never win another Presidential election. Every district gets representation, yea Texas might lose a few but so will the big lib states like Cali, New York, Florida and Illinois.
“We are a Republic.”
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Representative republic with the representatives democratically elected, with the Senate becoming democratically elected in 1913.
There is no debate. The EC stays.
Yeah, in other words, a republic.
Occasional Cortex is way out of her league and keeps spouting inane ideas on how to make this Republic a socialist paradise in trying to appear intelligent.
This is not debatable. Throwing my guantlet on the ground.
America is a Constitutional Republic.
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