Why we need to keep the Electoral College

Published 4:18 pm Tuesday, August 11, 2020

To the Editor:

The United States president and vice president aren’t chosen by a nationwide, popular vote of the American people. They are chosen by 538 electors. The process is explained and required by the United States Constitution. The most important question in every presidential election is: Which candidate will get the 270 votes needed to win the Electoral College? Tara Ross said the Electoral College is an ingenious method of selecting a president. Ross said America’s Founders didn’t want a pure majority democracy because history has shown pure democracies don’t work. Democracy has been described as two wolves and a lamb voting on what’s for dinner. The founders knew that in pure democracy the bare majorities can easily tyrannize the rest of the country. That is why they have three branches of government to divide the power between the president/executive, legislative/congress and judicial/courts.

Currently a presidential election is really 51 separate elections, one in every state and one in D.C. These 51 separate state processes exist in harmony and don’t interfere with each other. Tennessee state election code applies only to Tennessee and determines their state’s electors. State election laws and rules differ greatly. States have different rules about early voting, registering to vote, and qualifying for the ballot. States have different policies regarding criminal/felon voting. The Virginia Democrat Governor in 2016 issued an executive order granting the right to vote to over 206,000 convicted Virginia felons including murderers and rapists. I don’t agree with this as criminals aren’t known for making good choices. We will have more voter fraud with more voting by mail. Georgia even sent a voter registration form by mail to a dead cat. The owner said the cat would have voted Democat!

Prager University (www.prageru.com) gave three reasons we need the Electoral College. “First, it encourages coalition building and national campaigning. Because winning requires a diverse group of voters from all around the country. Second, it means every state and therefore every voter matters in the election. Meaning 51 percent of the population can’t tyrannize the other 49 percent. Third, it also makes it  harder to seal an election. The Electoral College makes it impossible to predict which states will matter most. Therefore nobody knows which votes they need to steal. But in a popular vote the votes stolen anywhere will affect the total outcome. In sum the Electoral College is an essential part of America.” Many young people are against the Electoral College. Prager University went to some colleges and talked with students and most of the students changed their mind to support the Electoral College after reading the three reasons we need the Electoral College.

Constitutional experts say the Electoral College has functioned without incident in every presidential election, through two world wars, a major economic depression and several periods of civil unrest. Such stability is rare in human history and shouldn’t be fully dismissed. Judy Cresanta said, “The Electoral College has performed its function for over 200 years and in over 50 presidential elections by ensuring the president has both sufficient popular support to govern and his popular support is sufficiently distributed throughout the country to enable him to govern effectively. Proposals to abolish the Electoral College, although frequently put forward, have failed largely because alternatives appear more problematic than the college in its present form. The fact that the Electoral College was originally designed to solve one set of problems is a tribute to the genius of the Founding Fathers.” Those that want to abolish the Electoral College think they are wiser than our Founding Fathers and every generation of Americans that preceded them. They aren’t wiser. As a military member I swore to protect the U.S. Constitution which includes the Electoral College. Respect our U.S. Constitution, the supreme law of America for 232 years and the difference between being governed and being ruled!

D.D. Nave

Elizabethton