Penny Thoughts: Our Electoral College

Recently there has been some discussion regarding our Nation’s Electoral College, which is a fundamental part of electing our President.  The genesis of this discussion is the fact that President Trump won the White House by winning the Electoral College. Most of our citizens seem to be aware of the Electoral College and its process, but we have never considered the consequences if it is done away with.

As a brief review of the Electoral College, it was provided for in Amendment XII in 1789.  It was amended in 1933 with the Twentieth Amendment which changed the dates for the congressional meetings to take their votes to the January 20 date. The establishment of the Electoral College in our Constitution was, as were many other conventions of governing, the result of a compromise. 

There were four facts which faced the Founders.  They have been identified by William C. Kimberling, the Deputy Director of the Federal Election Commission National Clearinghouse on Election Administration in 1992:

1. the Nation was composed of thirteen large and small States jealous of their own rights and powers and suspicious of any central national government;
2. the fledgling Nation’s population was only 4,000,000 people spread up and down a thousand miles of Atlantic seaboard barely connected by transportation or communication, thus, national campaigns were impractical even if they had been thought desirable;
3. the prevalent belief that political parties were “mischievous”, if not downright evil; and,
4. there was the predominant attitude that “gentlemen” should not campaign for public office embodied in the saying, “The office should seek the man. The man should not seek the office.”.

The Founders were trying to balance the desires of states with large populations and the states with lesser populations.  One compromise was the creation of a bicameral legislature – that is, a legislature which is made up of two parts, one based on population and one based upon individual state sovereignty, hence, we have a House of Representatives (population) and a Senate (individual state sovereignty).

The same basic argument emerged when there was a decision to be made about the process for electing a President.   The over-riding apprehension was the fear of an oppressive tyranny exercised by King George.  Alternately, there was also a fear, but not as predominant as King George, that a “tyranny of the majority” might develop.  In effect, why should they have traded a tyrant 1000 miles away for a tyranny of 1000 which is only one mile away?  The balance of these two ominous concerns resulted in the Electoral College.

On the one hand, we have the popular vote, which leads to the Electoral College.  The Electoral College is modeled after the College of Cardinals used in the Vatican when selecting a new Pope.  It is comprised of the given electors in each State equivalent to the number of members of Congress each State has.  Presently, the total number is 538, but that will change commensurate with the growth or loss of population in any State.

Simply put, the popular vote in each State determines the number of votes going to a candidate for the Presidency.  Alabama has 9 votes in the Electoral College.  In the 2016 Presidential election Trump won 62.1% of the popular vote and Clinton won 34.4%, thus, Trump garnered all 9 of Alabama’s Electoral votes.

The truly sad fact is that since that election, the Democratic Party has waged a constant and vicious campaign against the results of the Electoral College AND President Trump.

So much for accepting the election results and working toward a UNIFIED Nation!  This has NOT happened as we are all aware.

Some of you may remember my reference to a childhood acquaintance of mine who would never accept the will of the majority.  He was Richie Moncrief and he would always claim that there was something wrong with either the process or the procedure of any event which did not go his way.  If he did not win, Richie want to change the rules!  Sound familiar?

Richie Moncrief could very well be the Democratic National Committee Chair today – and he would fit right in!

The clarion call by the Democrats is to abolish the Electoral College.  It would take a Constitutional Amendment to do so, but their plan is to foment such antipathy for the Electoral College that the process will eventually collapse to their will.

The Amendment process can begin with a vote of two-thirds of both houses of Congress, then it is passed to the individual State legislatures where a three-fourths vote of those bodies must prevail.  Today, that is 37 states.

It is important to remember that the Founders were sorely aware that there must be a process for changing the Constitution but that this process must have integrity.

Any arbitrary and whimsical notion OR political motivation cannot merely “change” the Constitution – the “Law of the Land”.  Such change needs to be vetted and rational.

I think it is crucial to reflect on the simple fact that among the other reasons for keeping our Electoral College, the most important one is that we cannot have a “tyranny of 1000 who live one mile away”.  If there were not an Electoral College the attitudes of large population centers would determine the direction of our Nation.  In essence, the population concentrations on the Coasts would be telling us in the “fly over” States what to do – and that is just NOT what the Founders intended!