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Why We Need the Electoral College
By Bret Hrbek
12/8/2000
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Once
the dust settles, November 7, 2000 will not be remembered as an
historic presidential election but as the day the political career of
Hillary Rodham Clinton was born. The Clintons are like
Dalmatians at the
firehouse; they won't go away. But they aren't as cute.
Within days of her election, Clinton already began to show contempt
for the
very country that she serves by publicly suggesting the abolishment of
the
Electoral College. Some argue that she advocates the dismantling
of this
uniquely American institution for selfish reasons-she realizes she
can't be
elected president through it. I don't necessarily buy that
explanation. I
didn't think the voters of New York would actually pull the levers or
punch
their chads for her either. But they did. And it makes you
wonder which
group of voters deserve America's disdain more, Floridians or New
Yorkers.
But, I do believe the Electoral College was designed to prevent people
like
Hillary Clinton from eventually sitting in the Oval Office. It
was
designed, like the rest of the U.S. Constitution, to protect the
individual
rights and liberties from the masses and the natural socialistic,
expansive
and repressive tendencies of government.
The Electoral College balances the interests of all areas of the
country by
amplifying the influence of smaller state populations and capping the
dwarfing impact of mega-states that are larger than some countries.
For example, Al Gore won the popular vote. That's not in
dispute. But he
won it in the armpit of America. Gore only won 676 out of 3,112
counties in
the United States. And of the counties he did win, where are
they? For the most part, the big cities and the southern borders. Where do we
spend most
of our welfare dollars? I think a reasonable guess is....the big
cities and
the southern borders. So without the Electoral College these
dirty, crime
filled cities would determine who would become the president.
These election results are anecdotal evidence showing us that liberals
know
how to organize in the cities and they know how to manipulate and
intellectually and physically enslave minorities. George W. Bush
might not
have won the popular voters of Americans, but he did win the popular
vote of
America. Bush won counties representing 143 million citizens
while Gore won
counties representing only 127 million citizens.
I raise these points only to demonstrate the continued need for the
election
of the president by state and not by the popular vote.
Many people have already explained where presidential candidates would
spend
their time without the Electoral College. The liberals would
head to the
cities and southern borders (representing about 500,000 square miles)
and
the center-right candidates would spend time in the southern states
and
rural America (representing almost 2.5 million square miles).
(Haven't you
ever wondered why liberals want people to move to the city? They
know how
to control them there.)
If you want a real solution to our problems in America do not repeal
the
Electoral College but repeal the Seventeenth Amendment that provides
for the
direct election of senators. This would restore the
institutional friction
in our political system that protects our individual rights.
I won't defend everything about the original constitution or our
Founding
Fathers. Slavery was just as wrong in 1492, 1776, 1789, and 1860
as it is
today. We just acknowledge it now. But, the Founders did
strike a delicate
balance in the government's structure to protect our individual
liberties
with three branches of government that represented different agendas,
two
houses of one branch with different constituencies and a federal
government
always butting heads with state governments. Talk about
gridlock, it
created a small, inefficient government. Ah. Those must
have been the
days. Nothing could get done everyone could sleep at night.
We had the House of Representatives elected by the "people."
(Every time I
hear that I expect to see Eva Peron on the balcony crying for
Argentina.
Can't you see Hillary looking over the Rose Garden from the White
House
balcony? Where's Andrew Lloyd Webber?) Senators were
elected by the state
legislatures. The judiciary was elected by nobody but appointed
by the
executive and approved by the Senate. And the president was (and
still is
God willing) elected by a hybrid of direct vote and representative
government. Throw in state sovereignty and you make Washington,
D.C. rush
hour traffic look like the Indy 500 raceway.
Then in the earlier part of this century our so-called progressive
leadership broke the balance when they cut the states out of the
picture
with the direction election of senators. This is when federalism
died and
replaced with socialism.
Now Senator-elect Clinton and her socialist allies want to do the same
thing
to the presidency.
I don't trust democracies. As oxymoronic as it is, democracies
are
organized mob-rule. But they are the only political institution
that can
and will support capitalism. With the direct election of
senators though,
Gallup Polls already has more power than McDonald's or Microsoft or
the
average small business owner. I can only
imagine
how our rights would be trampled with the direct election of the
president.
I shutter to think.
Looking back, maybe Patrick Henry was right to oppose the ratification
of
the Constitution. Maybe he could see how it might actually
evolve. But I
don't even think he thought it could ever get this bad. I'm sure
he had
greater faith in the American people to stop this constant
encroachment on
our individual rights. And he probably never imagined Americans
electing
someone like Hillary Rodham Clinton.
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© Bret Hrbek, 2000
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