The Electoral College

The Electoral College

By Leon Howard

Federalist No. 68: The Mode of Electing the President
From the New York Packet
Friday, March 14, 1788.

Author: Alexander Hamilton

To the People of the State of New York: (An excerpt)

THE mode of appointment of the Chief Magistrate of the United States is almost the only part of the system, of any consequence, which has escaped without severe censure, or which has received the slightest mark of approbation from its opponents. The most plausible of these, who has appeared in print, has even deigned to admit that the election of the President is pretty well guarded. [1] I venture somewhat further, and hesitate not to affirm, that if the manner of it be not perfect, it is at least excellent. It unites in an eminent degree all the advantages, the union of which was to be wished for.

Many say the Electoral College is antiquated – out of date – unnecessary and should abolished, going to a popular vote to elect the President. I disagree for many reasons but the biggest reason to disagree with its abolishment, instituting a popular vote is this: 65% of the nation’s population reside in seven (7) states on eastern and western seaboard; they are decidedly liberal, big government folks and I do not want seven states dictating to the other forty-seven (47) what our priorities are! Do you?

The Electoral College protects all the states from the few and is a protection of the Tenth Amendment for that reason! The smaller states voice isn’t lost to the roar of the bully states and I like the way Hamilton explained it: “ … that if the manner of it be not perfect, it is at least excellent!” And it is not perfect: The first constitutional crisis occurred when Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr received the same number of electoral votes. Even though Jefferson was chosen as the Presidential candidate and Burr as the Vice Presidential candidate, it took the House of Representatives 36 successive ballots to finally elect Thomas Jefferson as President. Twenty-four years later, again no candidate received a 131 vote majority of electoral votes needed to become President. In this case, the House of Representatives voted for John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson and William H. Crawford on the first ballot. http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/history.html

The Electoral College is an added protection to the representative republic the founding fathers established; realizing man is not perfect, the representative republic protects against the “mischief” of man. James Madison summed it up best in Federalist No. 10, in part: “The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national councils against any danger from that source. A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State.”

A more perfect safeguard for Liberty could not have been written and it is up to the People, you and me, to protect it from the elitists, the ‘progressives’, because if they have their way, the very things Madison warns against in the preceding quote will be our childrens’ and grandchildrens’ future!

Not on our watch!

Scream loud and clearly to save the Electoral College to protect States’ rights and the minorities rights from the majority!