End Run Around the Electoral College

Steve Rankin from Free Citizen tipped me off to this plot to thwart the will of the Founding Fathers and circumvent the Electoral College.

The Federalist Patriot had this to say about it:

The push for the popular vote
As the nation begins to focus on the 2008 election, a movement is afoot to undermine the Electoral College. The key player in this effort is a group called National Popular Vote, a 501(c)(4) non-profit group that advocates having the popular vote dictate presidential selection.

Because the Constitution states that ``Each state shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors,`` the NPV effort is concentrating on getting as many states as possible to enact a bill that would, in effect, ``guarantee that the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia will win the Presidency.``

In all, 23 states currently have bills in their legislatures awarding the state’s electors to the winner of the national popular vote rather than the votes in their state. Sixteen of these states went for President Bush in the 2004 presidential election while John Kerry carried seven among them these states represent 255 electoral votes. Nothing like the states throwing away their own rights.


Two points to consider here. First, we do not have Provinces in the Union but States. There is a critical difference, one that has been subsumed in the rising tide of the imperialization of our supposed ``federal`` government. Federalism does not mean States are subordinate to the central government, and we supposedly live in a Federal system. There is supposed to be a balance between State and Centralgovernmentss, as surely as there is supposed to be a balance between the Legislative, Administrative, and Judicial branches of government. The decision to call them States was a conscious choice by the Founders, an affirmation of this Federalism. The Civil War began a process which has eroded the rights andprivelegess of the individual States, which has made them subordinate to the imperial power of the United States government. The Founding Fathers never intended such a thing, and most would have recoiled in horror at the prospect.

My second point is that we live in a republic, not a democracy, and the Founders would have been equally horrified to learn that we removed the safeguards from the system. Pure democracy equaled mob rule to the framers of the Constitution, and they created the Electoral College to act as a check and balance to the appetites of the mob-and to weaken the effects ofdemogogurye. Mind you, although we did not have universal education back then, but I sincerely doubt that the uneducated of that day knew all that much less than our citizens of today, the beneficiaries of our wonderful public educational system. Our educated of today, our leaders, lawyers, and pundits, would beembarrassedd in a debate with even the less formidable of the Founders, so well educated, literate, and inventive were these men. They knew their history, they knew their Aristotle and Plato, they knew their philosophers and scientists. In short, they knew what they were doing when they placed a buffer between the voting public (and it should be pointed out that the voting public had to be landholding males, thus had to have a stake in the public welfare and a modicum of education) and the actual election.

In 1913 an amendment was ratified-Amendment XVII (seventeen for those of you with a public school education)-which changed the way Senators are elected; formerly the College of Electors was responsible for deciding Senate races in much the same way it now decides the Presidential elections. Since the passage of this amendment, the Senate has become increasingly partisan and rancorous, more nearly resembling the House of Representatives which has always been elected directly by the People. The Founders did not intend this; the Senate was supposed to be ``collegial``, was supposed to be the sober deliberative body not easily swayed by the intemperate political passions to which the House of Representatives was subject. Longer terms of service were given to the Senators, so that they would act not based on public election pressures, and their indirect election was intended to cool passions further. No longer; in recent years, with Senators like Karl Levin, Teddy Kennedy, Richard Durbin (the Turban), Hill the Shrill, Chuck Shumer, the ``greatest deliberative body in the world`` more nearly resembles a gang of drunken soccer hooligans after losing the World Cup. Why? I would suggest it is because of the direct election of Senators.

Mostforecastss for the election of 2000 predicted Bush would win the popular vote but lose in the Electoral College; they had it exactly backward. Would the Democrats be howling for election reform if the prognosticators had been correct? Maybe some would, those with principles. Most, however, would not.

Democrats are very good at stuffing the ballot box, at manufacturing false votes. I`ve seen them in action; they have refined vote fraud to a high art (practice makes perfect) and have the supreme gall to accuse Republicans of that which they themselves are the more guilty. Demographics are killing (literally) the Democrat Party, and the only hope they have to continue winning elections is to stuff the ballot box (and give felons and illegal aliens the vote, too). They know that the Electoral College will hurt them in years to come, so it must be destroyed! Power is the only noble goal to them; all else is expendable!

The Electoral College is there for a good and noble reason. The Founders never intended for the direct election of the President. We should heed their wisdom!