Eliminating the Electoral College

Several of the declared presidential candidates for the 2020 elections in the Democrat Party have called for the elimination of the electoral college with subsequent presidential elections to be determined by popular vote. The framers of the Constitution recognized the potential hazards of direct democracy and developed the electoral college as a middle ground method of electing the president. In a pure democracy the major hazard is the majority taking advantage of the minority in the politics of daily life. In essence, the majority could invoke virtual slavery on the minority. The electoral college was designed loosely based on the populations of states, giving more populous states more electors, while at the same time protecting the states with lower populations.

One method of eliminating the electoral college is to have a constitutional amendment. The electoral college originates from Article 2 Section 1 of the Constitution which was later modified by the Twelfth Amendment. A constitutional amendment has to be approved by a two thirds vote of both the Senate and House of Representatives. After this high hurdle, the proposed amendment has to be ratified by three fourths of the states. An even higher hurdle that isn't likely to pass and certainly not anytime soon.

Because the Constitution does not place a requirement on how individual states allocate the votes of their electors there is another method that could happen much sooner. Each state could modify their legislation requiring electors to vote for the presidential candidate receiving the highest number of popular votes nationwide. According to National Popular Vote 13 states have already enacted this plan. All of these states are considered blue states, always voting for democrats. Of course this opens up the potential of the electors completely going against the will of the people they are representing. Imagine a state votes overwhelmingly for one presidential candidate while the other candidate receives the a higher nationwide vote and the populist president wins because of the shift in electors. The will of the voters in that state is completely ignored taking with it the desires of those in other states.

Liberals are pushing the idea of eliminating the electoral college because they see the change providing them with an ongoing advantage in elections. Notice I said liberals and not democrats. My feeling is the Democrat Party has been taken over by an extremely vocal minority of the party and there is a significant number in the party over the age of 30 that don't necessarily agree with the direction of the party. By the way, the human brain matures for women around the age of 26 and around 28 for men. Look at the map of the electoral college results from the 2016 election:

Image from Politico

As a method of protecting less populated states from more populated states, clearly the electoral college system works. There is a great divide in this country between liberals and conservatives. From the map and a little knowledge of the different states, you can see that a large part of that divide is between rural and urban living. States that voted for Trump (in red) have a more rural population while those that voted for Hillary (in blue) for the most part represent states with some of the largest cities in the United States. Eliminating the electoral college would make it possible for a minority of the states to control the majority of states. Liberals call this fair and they call it a democracy. News flash, we live in a republic, not a democracy.

States however do operate under a democracy from of government. The majority always wins. Two states in particular demonstrate this divide between rural and urban voting. Those states are Illinois and New York and there may be other good examples.

Images from Politico

The electors for both of these states went to Clinton. This is what it looks like under a pure democracy when one group has control over another. Both of these states are considered highly liberal, but the truth is it's not the states but rather the cities within the states. The urban areas are driving the politics for the remainder of the state. These states now have the problem that people are deciding to leave the state for a more suitable place to live. Data from the IRS shows this in the number of individual income tax returns filed.

State	2008	2017
Illinois	10,686,433	10,018,880
New York	14,281,365	13,213,065

These states are loosing tax payers. The priorities of those in urban environments and from those in rural environments will be different based on the experiences of each group. In these states the political views of those in cities are forced on those in the country. These views cover the wide array of our life impacted by politics.

Now imagine this happening on a nationwide scale. This is what eliminating the electoral college could eventually lead too. All new laws would be enacted based on the views of those in urban areas potentially at the detriment to those in rural areas. Eventually, people would not be content to live in this environment and the nation would start loosing taxpayers completely. Of course, this would start among the wealthiest, you know those people, the one's that provide jobs.