The Framers put together what we call an electoral college to minimize corruption. NPV would constitutionalize corruption and help destroy what remains of our republic. Democracy is killing us. Yes, we should elect true electors; people we trust to make intelligent decisions. It is too bad our State legislators were not bound to elect the President.
Electors haven’t made decisions since the time of the nation’s first competitive presidential election in 1796.
The current system does not provide some kind of check on the “mobs.” There have been 22,000 electoral votes cast since presidential elections became competitive (in 1796), and only 10 have been cast for someone other than the candidate nominated by the elector’s own political party. The electors now are dedicated party activists of the winning party who meet briefly in mid-December to cast their totally predictable rubberstamped votes in accordance with their pre-announced pledges.
If a Democratic presidential candidate receives the most votes, the state’s dedicated Democratic party activists who have been chosen as its slate of electors become the Electoral College voting bloc. If a Republican presidential candidate receives the most votes, the state’s dedicated Republican party activists who have been chosen as its slate of electors become the Electoral College voting bloc. The winner of the presidential election is the candidate who collects 270 votes from Electoral College voters from among the winning party’s dedicated activists.
“It is too bad our State legislators were not bound to elect the President.”
If they had been, then with the concurrent sense of federalism that implies, we could maybe expect at least the following:
(1)Most likely “popular vote” of the federal senators may not have been adopted;
and if so, then
(2)National direct personal income tax most likely would not have neen adopted (depriving one source of the fuel needed for massive growth of federal spending);
and
(3)The massive growth of the size, power, national breadth and depth of the federal government into the national private economy and our private lives would have been blunted.
But Conservatives need to be fully aware there can always be unintended consequences in the things we wish for. Greater federalism would be no insurance against many states adopting, for themselves, some of the worst “statist” and Marxist abuses that the federal government has obtained. And, a stronger sense of federalism might also cause the judiciary to NOT see the extension of federal Constitutional rights (with the post civil war amendments) as among the rights that could prevent the states becoming as “statist” and Marxist as the federal government has become.