By DR. LARRY MOSES
No one asked me but… Democrats have come to the conclusion that the Electoral College needs to be discontinued. They are championing the cause of the direct election of the President of the United States. This has been brought on by the fact that the last two Republican presidents have won the Electoral College vote, as stipulated in the Constitution, even though they lost the popular vote. However, the Democrat president between these two office holders won both the majority of the Electoral College and the vote of the people.
When the Democrat president was elected, there was no cry for abolishing the Electoral College. The fact that a party won or lost the election should not be the deciding factor for the role of the Electoral College in a presidential election. Electing a president through the use of the Electoral College, which has been the case since 1789, is either acceptable or not regardless of the outcome of the election.
Americans have been taught that the Electoral College exist to keep the people in small states from being dominated by the people living in large states. However, in the history of America, only three small state men have been elected President: Louisiana’s Zachary Taylor, New Hampshire’s Franklin Pierce, and Arkansas’ Bill Clinton. Only twice has the vote gone to the House of Representatives and both times the House chose the finalist from the largest eligible state: Virginia in 1800 and Massachusetts in 1824.
After the debacle of the election of 1800, the Twelfth Amendment was adopted changing how the Electoral College functioned. This change works against the small state argument as the amendment limited the number of candidates that could be considered by the House if it had to choose the President.
As political parties quickly developed; much to the chagrin of George Washington who in his wisdom warned against them; President and Vice-President pairs appeared that were balance by geography, not the size of the states they represented.
The real reason the Electoral College was instituted is to be found not in small state verses large state. The real issue was a factor that eventually led the United States into a Civil War. It was a North-South slavery issue. The elections of 1789 and 1792, saw a President from Virginia and a Vice President from Massachusetts. These offices were filled by men from Massachusetts – Virginia in 1796, and Virginia-New York in 1800. These combinations did not consider small states versus large states. The President and Vice-President in these elections represented two large states, balanced by the cultural difference of slavery.
If the direct election of the President was allowed states like Virginia could not increase their voting power by factoring in their slave population. Using the three-fifths clause, Virginia received an additional six House seats and thus six additional electors. This would be six votes more than the free state of Pennsylvania, though both states had nearly the same number of free citizens. Ten years later, after the census, Virginia got 20% more electors than Pennsylvania even though they had 10% fewer free citizens. This not only encouraged slave ownership as it existed, it made the growth of slavery a major political necessity for the states of the South. For thirty-two of the first thirty-six years a slave holding
Virginian would occupy the White House. No prominent antislavery leader was appointed to a high federal office before Lincoln’s administration.
I would suggest that today’s America is again divided into two basic cultural camps, urban and rural. For the most part the urban centers are Democrat strongholds and the rural areas lean Republican. We have almost reached a point of where there are two very distinct countries bound together by a Constitution that radical Republicans claims to deify and the extreme liberal Democrat seems to abhor; and neither reads or understand. Like it or not, America is a Democratic Republic, not a pure Democracy.
Representatives make our laws and for 229 years representatives have elected our Presidents.
If the majority of Americans want to change the Presidential election process, they need to follow the Constitution which established an amending process within the document itself. Article V reads as follows: “The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; …”
I don’t believe the majority of Americans are in favor of changing the method of selecting the President of the United States. A good solid candidate for either party can be elected under the present system. William M. Daley has stated: “While imperfect, the electoral college has generally served the republic well. It forces candidates to campaign in a variety of closely contested races, where political debate is typically robust.”
Hillary lost the 2016 election when she forgot that the race was taking place in a “variety of closely contested races” and chose to ignore those areas she felt she could take for granted.
The problem with the last Presidential election was not the Electoral College, it was that the two major political parties presented the American people with two very flawed candidates. Hillary needed to only hold onto Pennsylvania and Florida for a win. She ignored those states and campaigned in the friendly confines of New York and California. Holding these states would have been easy for almost any other Democrat candidate for both states have been traditionally a Democrat stronghold.
Just a note for those who think of Nevada as a Republican state, Nevada has voted Democrat in every presidential election since 2004 and with the influx of Californians into Las Vegas and Reno, it is not likely that will change.
The real undemocratic feature of America politics is not the Electoral College; it is a two-party system that disenfranchises 22 percent of Americans who refuse to kowtow to party politics and remain non-partisan and, therefore, cannot vote for a presidential candidate in the primaries.
Thought of the Week: Somebody asked me about the current choice we’re being given in the presidential election. I said, Well, it’s like two of the scariest movies I can imagine.
– Dean Koontz
