Posted on 05/27/2024 10:32:44 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Last week, Joy Behar of “The View” on ABC called the Electoral College “un-American.”
Oh my. Perhaps we could call her an “Electoral College dropout”?
The Constitution says that “We the people” are in charge of our country, but we act through our elected representatives. The provision for the Electoral College can be found in the Constitution in Article II, Section 1, Clause 2. It’s in America’s foundational document — despite Joy Behar’s claim that it’s “un-American.” The gist of it is that we don’t directly elect the president, but we do vote for those who do so. The Constitution provides a layer of protection — to spare us from would-be dictators.
I once produced a short video segment for Providence Forum called, “A Republic, Not a Democracy.” It includes comments on the Electoral College.
In that video, the late Dr. Walter Williams, who had been a long-time professor at George Mason University, noted: “The founders of our country did not intend for us to be a democracy or a majority rule, because the founders held democracy in utter contempt. They feared the idea of majority rule.”
So, said Dr. Williams, they came up with “the Electoral College as a way of electing the president, because if we did not have an Electoral College, then big states — highly populated states like California and New York and Florida — would decide who’s the president. Very few presidential candidates would campaign in Wyoming or Idaho, because the population is very small. They would put all their resources in the heavily populated states, and the founders were trying to, in their brilliance, they were trying to prevent that.”
We seem to forget these days that the states created the federal government, and not the other way around. The Electoral College is a way to let the little states have a say, as well as the big states. Because candidates have to win not just the majority vote, but the majority of the Electoral College votes, they cannot simply focus their presidential campaigns on population centers like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. They must also appeal to voters in less populous states to amass those electoral votes. If there were no Electoral College, states like Idaho, West Virginia, and either of the Dakotas might never be visited by a presidential candidate again.
For our video, I also interviewed Dennis Prager of PragerU, and he put it this way: “The Electoral College was a brilliant innovation of the founders, because they didn’t want a democracy, they wanted a republic.”
He noted, “The founders, being wise, understood people are not basically good. You can’t be wise if you think human nature is good. So, they understood they have to have as many checks and balances on human power as possible. That is why we have three branches of the government to be a check on one another. They didn’t trust human beings, and correctly so.”
And all of this bears directly on the Electoral College issue, notes Prager: “So, they understood that a simple direct election could easily end up with some demagogue getting a majority of the popular vote. So, there’s a check on the popular vote by the states, and that’s why they have the Electoral College. The popular vote is important, but it is not the only decisive thing. It was genius. If we get rid of the Electoral College, it’s the beginning of the end of America as it has been constituted.”
Speaking of Prager, one of the popular PragerU videos featured Constitutional scholar Tara Ross on this very issue. She is the author of The Indispensable Electoral College: How the Founders’ Plan Saves Our Country from Mob Rule and Enlightened Democracy: The Case for the Electoral College.
Having interviewed her on the radio before, I asked her for any comment to the idea of the Electoral College as supposedly being “un-American.”
She told me:
“The Electoral College is directly established by our Constitution and reflects the most basic principles of America’s founding charter. If the Electoral College is ‘un-American,’ then so is every other constitutional institution. Our Constitution creates a government that is a blend of democracy (self-governance), republicanism (deliberation & compromise), and federalism (national vs. state authority) because our Founders sought to ensure that the American government reflects all voices, despite our diversity and despite the varying sizes of our states.”
And Ross added, “The Electoral College is a reflection of these principles and simply ensures that large states and urban areas don’t tyrannize the rest of the country when it comes to selection of the President. Calling the Electoral College ‘un-American’ is nonsensical. If anything, the Electoral College is uniquely American.”
It would seem to me that people like Joy Behar have the opportunity to voice their opinions, no matter how seemingly inane, precisely because of the governmental structure the founders of America so cleverly laid for us as one nation under God.
Jerry Newcombe, D.Min., is the executive director of the Providence Forum, an outreach of D. James Kennedy Ministries, where Jerry also serves as senior producer and an on-air host. He has written/co-written 33 books, including George Washington’s Sacred Fire (with Providence Forum founder Peter Lillback, Ph.D.) and What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? (with D. James Kennedy, Ph.D.). www.djkm.org? @newcombejerry www.jerrynewcombe.com
However combinations or associations of the above description (political parties) may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”
President George Washington’s Farewell Address (original written for him by James Madison as Washington’s first term neared... GW put it aside when he decided to run for a second term, this version as co-edited by Washington himself and Alexander Hamilton at the end of his second term)
Yes, the EC so strange we have to patiently explain it to foreigners and low IQ people like Joy.
On the other hand the UK is going to have an election on July 4. How many people are going to get to vote for the office of Prime Minister? Millions? Tens of millions? Why no, the only people who will get to vote for PM are members of the newly elected Parliament.
The only big difference is that each of the sovereign states is allocated two EC votes besides the allocation based on population. Hundreds of MPs will vote for the new PM and hundreds of Electors will vote for President & Vice President.
They had wisdom back then. They wanted every state to have a say...not just states like New York and California.
Electoral College is the foundation of American Democracy.
“The Electoral College is a way to let the little states have a say, as well as the big states”
That’s what our Senate does so what’s the big deal?
A vestigial remnant of foundation of the American Republic.
You too seem to have been brainwashed by our K12 system into thinking the Founders gave us mob-ocracy!
How easily they forget.
...and to the Republic for which it stands...
If Joy Behar thinks the Electoral College is un-American, why was she so upset that January 6, 2021 protestors threatened the Electoral College?
Bookmark.
We don't vote directly for the President because the President is not the ruler of the People. The President is the executive officer of the federation of states. It's the states that elect the President to oversee the limited powers that the states delegated to the federal government.
It was the role of the governors of the several states to lead the people of their states. It was the role of the federal Executive to manage the relationships between the states, to be the voice of the nation in foreign relations with other countries, and to be the commander-in-chief of the military during armed conflicts.
The President's constituents were the governors, not the people. The states were the sovereign governments closest to the people. That's why the Senate was designed to be appointed by their respective state legislatures: 1) to confirm the President's nominations for executive branch offices and judicial picks, and 2) to ratify treaties that the President negotiated with foreign governments.
It was the several states, through the Senate, that were supposed to "lead" the President, not the other way around. This is why Article IV Section 4 says "and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened)..." The states were expected to communicate to their Senators to convey to the President what the states were going to do. They were not asking the President for permission, they were informing the President of their intended actions.
-PJ
Why does she even get a sentence in the MSM when everyone knows she’s a Leftist idiot? The only reason she bitching now is because the EC is going to knock her liege off his throne. Why wasn’t it an issue when they won their crooked election?
I always laugh at these completely ignorant Democrats (but I repeat myself). The founders knew the central problem with ANY government was how to:
a. Have a government that derives its power from consent of the governed.
b. While at the same time limiting the excercise of power to only "just" powers.
c. Since the purpose of government is to protect unalienable rights, any power excercised to usurp those rights is, ipso facto, unjust.
This is the central problem discussed in the most famous Federalist Paper - #10 by Madison.
This is also the heart of the Lincoln - Douglass debate where Lincoln opposed Popular Sovereignty for this exact reason - The majority doesn't have the authority to permit slavery - the denial of the unalienable right to liberty. (Ironically, the more the Democrats change, the more they stay the same - Joey (neither of them) doesn't realize they use the same arguments for the same reasons as their slave holding predecessors.)
The Constitution has many provisions that affect this in addition to Electoral College:
1. The amendment process
2. Presidents CinC authority
3. Presidential appointments of the Judges
4. Judges lifetime appointments
5. Bicameral legislature
6. Appointment of Senators(done in by democrats)
7. Federalism itself (confirmed but ignored by the 10th amendment)
8. Limited federal powers (confirmed and ignored by 9th amendment)
There are others that developed after ratification
1. Filibuster
2. Gerrymandering
Without the Electoral College, America would be like that country in the movie “The Hunger Games”.
"Is the Electoral College 'un-American?'"
The ultimate purpose of the electoral college is to make sure that the right person is in charge of the armed forces during wartime.
On the other hand, most patriots still do not seem to understand that, militia readiness aside, one of the main peacetime responsibilities of POTUS of the constitutionally limited power federal government is to sign an annual 20+ page appropriations bill to keep the mail moving, one of the very few powers that the states have actually given to the peacetime federal government, most federal domestic policy now based on state powers that the post-17th Amendment ratification feds have stolen from the states.
"Article I, Section 8, Clause 7: To establish Post Offices and post Roads;"
"From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added]." —United States v. Butler, 1936.
In fact, many women citizens probably still don't understand that the main thing that their fight for women's suffrage won for them in the context of federal elections, evidenced by the 19th Amendment, is the right to complain about unconstitutionally high federal taxes as a consequence of federal government abuse of 16th Amendment powers (direct taxes), a right that men already had even though both men and women evidently still don't have a grip on just how corrupt the federal government is.
"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States." —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
From the congressional record, a clarification about the federal government's constitutionally limited powers by Rep. John Bingham, a constitutional lawmaker:
”Simply this, that the care of the property, the liberty, and the life of the citizen, under the solemn sanction of an oath imposed by your Constitution, is in the States and not in the federal government [emphases added]. I have sought to effect no change in that respect in the Constitution of the country.” —John Bingham, Congressional. Globe. 1866, page 1292 (see top half of third column)
"16th Amendment : The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived [emphasis added], without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."
"19th Amendment: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. (19A mainly gave women a voice to complain about high cost of federal postage stamps.)
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."
All that being said, Obama is actually to be commended for spending as much time on the golf course as he did imo, playing lots of golf arguably symbolic of what constitutional drafters had in mind for a peacetime POTUS.
Patriots, let's not waste Trump's campaign time. We need to support hopeful Trump 47 by electing a new patriot Congress in November so that he will not be a lame duck POTUS from the first day of his second term, the new Congress supporting Trump to quickly finish draining the swamp.
And Trump will hopefully break Obama's record for POTUS hours spent golfing after Trump finishes draining the swamp.
No, those who want to believe we’re a democracy rather than a democratic republic need to learn some history and civics. Wishing it were so does not make it so.
Joy-less Behar is nothing if she’s not ignorant. It’s a badge she wears proudly.
They plan to circumvent the College by getting states like Maine to assign their electors to whomever wins the national popular vote, regardless of how the citizens of Maine voted. A subterfuge worthy of Stalin or Putin.
Whenever you see proposals like this come up in your state, (and they will), get out a fresh can of Raid.
If people are against the electoral college now, just wait until it changes to their desire and the presidential candidates only go the six states with the largest populations to campaign.
The usual suspects usually say the EC is “undemocratic”, which is of course true, but that’s because it was specifically designed to be “undemocratic”.
The US as a “Democracy” is kind of a post world war II state department propaganda thing near as I can tell. You can usually get most people to at least understand the problem by way off illustration.
What if, for example, there was a “World Government”? Would everyone in the rest of the world be OK with India and China deciding everything? I have met leftists who are fine with New York and LA etc deciding everything. That’s why they want to kill the EC, naturally.
Killing the 2 senators per state will be tougher sledding. But I’m confident the Republicans will (somehow) get the job done. That’s their job, apparently. Democrats screw everything up, Republicans make sure nothing gets fixed, make sure it stays that way
Earlier then WWII, try Wilson WWI era!
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