ELECTORAL COLLEGE MUSINGS

ELECTORAL COLLEGE DEVISED TO PROTECT US FROM TYRANNY OF ONE SORT CONTINUES TO PROTECT US FROM TYRANNY OF ANOTHER

The recent election results, in which one candidate has won the popular vote while the other has garnered the majority of the elector's votes, to win the Presidency has been much in the public media. Many pundits on the left have complained about the Electoral College system's short comings, how it puts an unwelcome stumbling block in the path of the voter, making the government less responsive...less "democratic".

The Electoral College was set up by the Founders to protect the Republic from one of their major fears---the tyranny of the masses. In this 2016 election the inherent wisdom of the College has become manifest...as a means of shielding the nation as a whole from the potential tyranny of a cultural and ethnic minority of coastal elites and their minions. It illustrates for us the value of this seemingly arcane, undemocratic system as a means to insure that all of our citizens--members of our physically vast, ethnically and politically diverse nation----urban and rural--- are represented and weighed fairly on the political scale in Washington. It also assures that the winner would have a broad mandate to govern...with substantial popularity over a wide expanse of the physical nation.

As a result of analysis of the outcome of this last election...it has now been revealed (Dec 8, 2016) in press reports that of the some three thousand (3,113) counties (and similar regions) which record election results as a unit, Mrs. Clinton, the Democrat candidate, won 487 counties, or less than 16% of the total. Those won by Clinton were primarily concentrated in a narrow band along part of the east and west coasts. Mr. Trump, the Republican, on the other hand carried more than five times as many counties (2,626) or 84% of the total. The counties he won stretched over an area comprising the wide central, southern and northern swath of the nation.

Some may claim that the votes of REAL PEOPLE count...rather than just empty territory. Indeed many of the counties Trump won ARE sparsely populated. But were the USA to simply decide our elections on the popular vote, Americans living in "fly-over country" would be effectively disenfranchised. Politicians would naturally focus on the dense concentration of diverse voters living in enclaves on the coasts. Small town issues, valid and urgent rural concerns would likely be ignored. Such a system would in effect disenfranchise the central core of the nation and its rural, small town inhabitants. It would also make it difficult for such a candidate to govern the nation should he or she win in such a way. Unhappily for the Democrats---this was the strategy ( a losing one) that the Clinton team followed. Using "identity politics" they targeted a handful of demographic elements in the densely populated cities and suburbs: single women, blacks, hispanics, the gay and lesbian communities, etc., etc. and as they have been doing all along---ignored the 70% of the population that is white, high school educated, underemployed and living in the nation's mid section. The Clinton team forgot about the Electoral College. They thought that they had the election sewed up with their handful of minority voters all concentrated in the coastal zone. The ignored the founders intentions and the Electoral College and lost.

Clinton did win more popular votes. The Democrat racked up a plurality of more than 2.5 million popular votes at last count. However, this plurality of popular votes were derived from large turnout in only TWO states: California and New York. If our elections were decided on only the popular vote one could see how these dense enclaves, with their distinctive populations, their particular economic, social, and physical needs and circumstances, would dominate the political agenda of a vast nation. That would not be wise or fair. Furthermore, how could such a candidate, popular in only a small though densely populated region, lead an entire nation?

It would not be true to state that our Founders were "wise" in setting up this election system for such a diverse nation....they could not have imagined what the weak, conflicted, squabbling thirteen colonies would become. Their concerns were of different matters. So it was just lucky happenstance that our Electoral College system...devised to offset the potential for one kind of tyranny...has come to be a protector of the rights of multitudes of rural, exurban, small town Americans who live scattered between the Appalachians and Rockies in what some call "fly-over" country.

So let us celebrate the fortuitous circumstances of history which we have inherited: the (yes) arcane but useful convention we call the Electoral College.