Down with the Electoral College

Massachusetts has joined Illinois, New Jersey, Hawaii, Washington, and Maryland in the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. It is a sort of work around the Elector System to guarantee that the candidate who receives the most popular votes nationally will become the president. Many other states have had at least one branch of their legislative bodies pass similar laws, and even more did it at least once, but then the progress was pushed back by either delays or gubernatorial vetoes.


So why should we tear down the Electoral College?


That's easy: it's not a Democratic system.


In the Electoral College of today, only the votes of the dominant party in any given state actually matter in the selection of the the president. A Republican vote in Oregon means nothing. A Democratic vote in Alabama means nothing. Only the majority of each state has a say in politics. Some states also manage to become more important than others in the process. The swing-states, like Kansas or Florida, become the true deciders of a presidential election because all the other states are locked in for a specific candidate. Republicans don't come to Washington, and Democrats don't go to South Carolina. Currently, its a waste of valuable money.


Also, the American citizens of Purto Rico, Guam, and our other colonial holdings have no say in the election of the president whatsoever. These votes would also begin to count after the Electoral College was dismissed.


The only argument opposing this movement is the idea that it violates the Constitution as it stands, or that it avoids the amendment process to change the Constitution. However, these people have obviously never read the Constitution.


There is nothing in the Constitution that even says the Electors have to vote with the vote of their state citizens. All it requires is that they vote themselves.


Here is the phrase in Article II, Section I:

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

Then the rules of how the votes were counted was changed by the 12 Ammendment in 1804, but again, only provides information on how the results are submitted and then added together at the capitol. It does not stipulate how the Electors should vote, nor even says they have to look at any of the votes cast by the citizens of their states.


So, a law in a state that mandates how the Electors vote does not violate any part of the constitution. In fact, it is an exercise of State's Rights, supposedly the mainstay of the Republican Party, which ironically is also the most vocal in opposing these types of laws.