This is not a political blog: it is civics. If we don’t
understand our civics, we will go astray in our politics. Most people in this
country are in dire need of a civics lesson. (Note to educators: put Civics
back in the high school curriculum.) Please keep reading even if you are sick
of the political scene. This blog is inspired by the latest issue of Imprimis, a monthly publication of
Hillsdale College. Right away some of you are squirming, but please stay with
me.
In the article in Imprimis,
Trent England, a well-credentialed conservative speaker, summarizes a speech he
gave at Hillsdale in April of 2019. He makes a strong case for the continuing
existence of the electoral college to select our future Presidents. Dr. England
believes that the current effort to eliminate or weaken the Electoral College
is pure partisan politics in a gambit to garner undeserved power in Presidential
elections. He bases his argument on the very reasons our Founding Fathers
created the Electoral College system in the first place.
The wise men who established our form of government realized
that direct election of the national leader had two possible undesirable
outcomes. First, it might become a popularity contest with people voting only
for their favorite son candidates. Secondly, more importantly, popular voting
could allow more populated areas of the country to gain an unfair advantage
over lesser populated areas. Dr. England points to examples from history when a
popular vote was countermanded by the electoral vote resulting in a President
elected by majority of States if not a majority of votes. This makes for a
better representative type of government.
That word “representative” is significant. We do not have a
democratic (small “d”) form of government, despite the misapprehensions of the
likes of Hillary Clinton who opined after the Florida debacle of 2000, “In a
democracy, we should respect the will of the people, and to me that means it’s
time to do away with the Electoral College.” The United States of America has
never been a democracy (sorry, Hillary), nor did the founders want it to be.
The Founding Fathers rightly saw that a true democracy – one
man, one vote – could easily devolve into the tyranny of the majority. Today,
for example, a true democracy would mean that our national policies and
politicians would be dictated primarily by the East and West Coast, a situation
those of us in “flyover” country would detest. But that is precisely why so
many Democrats (Progressives) want that unfair advantage.
Dr. England points to another very good reason to maintain
the Electoral College: it limits the effects of voter fraud. Because each state
chooses electors to select the President, fraud in one state would affect only
that state’s selection. This is still a cause for worry, as free and fair
elections are fundamental to our type of government. However, if we did away
with the Electoral College, the whole country would suffer under the “vote
early and vote often” attitudes of places like Illinois where someone once
bragged that even the dead get a vote.
If you are watching politics these days, you may have heard
of the national Popular Vote Interestate Compact, or NPV. Dr. England correctly
reveals this ploy as a Democrat attempt to do away with the Electoral College
by slight of hand. NPV takes advantage of a loophole in the language which
mandates the Electoral College. Each state is allowed to determine how it
selects electors. NPV would allow states to ignore their state’s voters if the
national popular vote supported a different candidate than their state vote. Hidden
in its name, NPV shows that it would ignore a given state’s popular vote and promote
the popular vote nationwide, thus taking away the will of its own voters. It is
instructive that only Democrat-controlled states have signed on to NPV so far.
I have attempted to summarize what I think is a very important
argument for the continuation of the Electoral College. You can read the entire
article on the
Hillsdale College web site. This blog may seem to have nothing to do with
Heaven (which always matters most), but I believe the free and fair elections
our country has held for two centuries are responsible for the free and fair
(mostly) representative government our founders envisioned. If we lose this
freedom and succumb to the wishes of the liberal elite, Christianity will
probably be outlawed outright. We could still live under that stricture, but it
would not be pleasant. I pray it does not come to that anytime soon.
