Why the Assault on the Electoral College?

Since the presidential election social media has been abuzz with angst over President-Elect Trump’s resounding win in the Electoral College (EC). More often than not, that reaction has been first an apparent lack of understanding of what the EC is and then horror that such a thing exists.

Now, Senator Barbara Boxer (Dem – CA) says she is going to introduce legislation to eliminate what too many consider an outdated system that served the founders of this country well but not modern America.

“In my lifetime, I have seen two elections where the winner of the general election did not win the popular vote,” said Senator Boxer. “When all the ballots are counted, Hillary Clinton will have won the popular vote by a margin that could exceed two million votes, and she is on track to have received more votes than any other presidential candidate in history except Barack Obama. This is the only office in the land where you can get more votes and still lose the presidency. The Electoral College is an outdated, undemocratic system that does not reflect our modern society, and it needs to change immediately. Every American should be guaranteed that their vote counts.”

A recent comment on Boxer’s official website rejoiced, saying that the candidate who got a majority of the votes should be declared President. The response unwittingly revealed the sad ignorance of the electoral process, the Constitution, and simple math that too many of today’s voters have.

Neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump won a majority of the popular vote because anything less than 50 percent is a plurality. That would mean this long, sad election cycle might continue for months without resolution.

Uninformed voters voice their support for a democratic vote to end what they consider an undemocratic process. Forget the fact that what Boxer is doing as she leaves office is symbolic at best and dangerous at worst because the Electoral College cannot be simply voted away. She knows that such a thing would take an amendment to the Constitution that must be ratified by at least three-fourths of the states within seven years after its passage in the U.S. Congress.

Whenever we hear “but the Electoral College isn’t democratic” our response should not be defensive nor negative but rather agreement. Then again, how many times do we have to remind people that the United State is not a democracy but rather a Constitutional or a Federal Republic.

No form of representative democracy, as opposed to direct democracy, aspires to be perfectly democratic. Certainly not our federal government. In the entire executive and judicial branches, only two officials are elected—the president and vice president. All the rest are appointed.

In truth every minority group in America should be thankful that this is not a pure democracy.

James Madison made it clear that the Founders fashioned a republic, not a pure democracy. They were committed to the governed as the ultimate basis of government, but also understood that consent could not be reduced to simple majority or plurality rule.

A recurring charge is that the Electoral College flies in the face of the democratic principle of one person, one vote. Isn’t that principle essential to our form of government?

That again shows a basic misunderstanding of the genius of our republic. Neither the Senate, nor the Supreme Court, nor the president is elected on the basis of one person, one vote. That is why a state like Rhode Island gets the same number of senators as Texas. Consistency would require that if we abolish the Electoral College, we rid ourselves of the Senate as well. Apparently, Senator Boxer doesn’t care about that since she is leaving office anyway.

The founders of this country debated long and hard about how our President should be elected. At least five options were considered but a direct popular vote was never considered as a viable choice.

Some of that may have been because they had seen the excesses of the recent French revolution and its fairly rapid degeneration into a dictatorship. What appeared a victory for the people there had quickly led to blood in the streets and a strong man promising deliverance. Though they had deep philosophical differences our founders wanted nothing to do with that.

So the next time someone complains that the election wasn’t democratic, the best thing to do is nod and say, “Thank goodness.”

~American Liberty Report


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