The Washington Post on Sunday penned an editorial calling for the elimination of the Electoral College. According to the editorial board, it’s time for America to be covered by the majority without the protections for the minority.
From the editorial (emphasis mine):
… The electoral college, whatever virtues it may have had for the Founding Fathers, is no longer tenable for American democracy.
We write this with full awareness of the challenges of adopting a new system, with respect for many of the people who continue to argue against a switch, and with awareness that any change may have unintended consequences. Right now, our presidential elections are conducted by 51 separate authorities, each with its own rules on registration, mail-in balloting and more. Each state counts its own ballots, and each decides when recounts are needed. All of that would have to change if the president were chosen based on the national vote count. Additionally, electoral college math induces candidates to pay attention to voters in some small states who might otherwise be ignored.
But why should Iowa’s biofuel lobby get more of a hearing than, say, California’s artichoke lobby? Small states already have disproportionate clout in our government because of the Senate, in which Wyoming’s fewer than 600,000 ?residents have as much representation as California’s 39.5 million. We see no particular reason voters in purple states such as Wisconsin should be valued more than voters in red states such as Mississippi or blue states such as Washington.
…
Americans are not going to be satisfied with leaders who have been rejected by a majority of voters, and they’re right not to be. It’s time to let the majority rule.
So be that standard we would become the lapdogs of California…no thanks.
I know California’s always the boogeyman in this argument, but the electoral college makes it that someone’s vote in a state like Wyoming is worth 3 times more than someone’s vote in a larger state like Texas. How is that remotely fair?
See comment below at 9:25 a.m. for explanation of the necessity for electoral college and Senate
And the horse they rode in on!
Washington Compost is just a tax write-off for Amazon billionaire Bezos. Stop filling his wallet and ego.
Out of touch urbanites like the author of this op-ed are exactly why we have an electoral college and a Senate that gives each state equal voting power. Where, pray tell, does the writer think his food and energy sources come from? Rural America! If we go to straight majority rule, then most people voting on leaders and policy will have absolutely no idea how to produce anything and will write legislation that sounds the death knell for agriculture and industry. Like Venezuela, we will be starving in 40 years. Look no further than the CHOP’s pitiful attempt in Portland to grown their own food and don’t even get me started on the fact that they evidently had not considered the fact that they would need light, heat, water and sewer. If all of those had been cut off from them CHOP would have ended much sooner. The American get ‘er done mentality that now only exists in pockets of our civilization is all that is keeping America warm and fed.