Killing The Electoral College Is A Dumb Idea Pushed By Ignorant People

[Geee]

The Federalist:

If you want to get rid of the Electoral College, you don’t understand how it works. I mean the royal “you,” not the partisan “you.” Opposition to the Electoral College tends to break down along partisan lines—especially lately, for some reason—but even President-elect Donald Trump said he’d prefer “simple votes.”

 

You can hardly be blamed for your ignorance if you went to public school, attended an elite university, or get your news from Yahoo. Some very nice, apparently well-educated people—Barbara Boxer—are peddling absolute Pablum about the Electoral College. “The Electoral College is an outdated, undemocratic system that does not reflect our modern society, and it needs to change immediately. Every American should be guaranteed that their vote counts.”

 

You are one of them, with all due respect, if you’ve said or thought any of the following.

 

The American Founders set up the Electoral College as a members-only club for white, male property owners.

 

You’re right. Only white, male property owners could serve as electors. Only white, male property owners could vote, for that matter. Women, the poor, and—with special brutality—slaves were treated like dogs who might be lucky enough to get a scrap from their master’s table. From our twenty-first century lives, we can’t begin to register that sort of inhumanity.

But this isn’t Social Justice 101; that class is down the hall. This is America 101. This class is the awe-inspiring story of tragically flawed people who somehow managed to win an unwinnable war and devise—despite their racist, sexist, classist limitations—a document like no other: our Constitution.

They rose above powerful cultural blinders to set forth an ideal that transformed man’s relationship to government and to his fellow man. What is seen by some as their hypocrisy—all men are created equal—is really a testament to their vision. Nobody’s mad at John Lennon for singing “Imagine” about a world that didn’t exist. Why are we mad at the Founders for envisioning freedoms for all that were unimaginable at the time?

[Geee]

Some Elites Think We Should Get Rid of States. Here’s Why They’re Wrong.

 

Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, but lost the Electoral College—and it’s driving progressives nuts.

 

The renewed calls to abandon the “antiquated” and “undemocratic” Electoral College were to be expected. But in a column for The Washington Post’s “In Theory” blog, author Lawrence R. Samuel goes even further, suggesting we get rid of states altogether.

 

In the 18th century, he admits, “the coming together of 13 disparate colonies was itself a historic achievement,” but since then, “regional differences have drastically dissipated … turning the once radical proposition of the ‘United States’ into an anachronism that now has little real value.” In his view, dispensing with states “offers a cleaner, more sensible, and much more affordable system.”

 

Insofar as Americans—no matter their state of residence—can shop at the same stores, eat at the same chain restaurants, and watch the same sitcoms, the nation is arguably more homogeneous than at the time of the founding.

 

But Samuel’s argument relies on the deeper claim that “we share the same basic principles and core values grounded in the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

 

A national consensus on principles and values may exist at the most abstract level, but not when it comes down to the stuff of everyday living.

 

http://dailysignal.com/2016/11/30/some-elites-think-we-should-get-rid-of-states-heres-why-theyre-wrong/