The Electoral College and the false theory of “majority” choice
For those that have not studied the US Constitution and the associated articles, the Bill of Rights, and the Amendments, while not an exciting read it is an enlightening one. Pay specific attention to Amendment 12, replacing a part of Article 2, and ratified in 1804. It lays out the way electors are meant to function during a presidential election.
The idea here was simple, really: Each state gets a say in who they want to be president. I wrote about this a couple of weeks back, and referred to this as a brilliant system that was designed to slightly “mute” a straight majority-rule environment. The working theory is this: A President is supposed to be the President for all people, and therefore must win across most sections of the country. And this point is particularly important: Nowhere in the Constitution – seriously nowhere – does it say “he/she with the majority of votes across the board should win the election.” Again, this was a brilliant, well-intended move. 2020 Presidential Candidate Elizabeth Warren’s very recent proclamation to abolish the electoral college because then she believes states like Mississippi will get a stronger voice is totally wrong, uneducated, and frankly ill-informed. Here’s (again) some reasons why:
Imagine you were a presidential candidate. If you only needed a simple majority to win the election, would you spend one minute doing anything with the middle of the country, except flying over it, on your way to LA, the Bay Area, Chicago, New York City, Houston, Miami, Dallas, Seattle, Detroit, Tampa Bay, or Atlanta? Would you care (a.k.a., give a rat’s *whatever*) about farmers in Iowa or Nebraska or Kansas or Colorado? Would you care at all about critical water issues facing the desert Southwest? Would the Gulf Coast even fit into your campaign stops? Most likely, no. So, when Senator Warren claims that moving to a straight majority vote would “remove the need for swing state visits” – she’s right. It’ll most likely remove them from any visits. The smaller of those states would be totally ignored.
Let’s look at the consortium of states attempting to jump on the “majority popular vote” bandwagon. Colorado, with its new democrat-controlled legislature and governorship, is the most recent joiner of this completely ignorant move. The idea is simple: If enough states (read: states that collectively hold 270 electoral votes) sign onto this idea, they would hold their votes until the popular count is in, and award all their votes to that candidate. No matter which candidate that state’s population majority voted for. You read that right: Jared Polis, our new Boulder-based governor, just signed that into law.
It’s no secret that democrats have prevailed in popular vote and still lost the presidential election on at least 2, if not 3 races in the past. It’s also no secret that heavily democrat-controlled major national population centers drove a huge part of that democrat popular vote. Ultimately, though, Hillary losing to Trump pushed democrats totally over the edge. Look at the utter insanity happening in the flipped Colorado legislature now as a prime example. New electoral law, new oil and gas restrictions (going against what Colorado voters defeated in just this last election), a new mandatory paid family leave payroll “fee”, new increases on hunting and fishing licenses designed to raise revenue from in-state sportsmen (out of state licenses were not increased), and a host of other issues. Colorado went radical almost immediately.
But coming back to the electoral point: The process was deliberately designed to not allow popular votes alone to drive presidential elections. The process was designed to get candidates out to all corners of our land – not the 5 key population-based states. The process was designed so that we could elect someone who is selected from all corners of our country, and absolutely not by just getting California and New York to vote for them while ignoring most of the rest of the nation. Now Polis and the Colorado legislature have set Colorado’s voice to mean nothing, and California to instead now speak for us.
