Proposed Voting Changes Are about Power, not Principles

[Geee]

National Review

New rules and new voters reduce the relative voting clout of law-abiding adult citizens.

Progressive candidates and new Democratic representatives have offered lots of radical new proposals lately about voting and voters. They include scrapping the 215-year-old Electoral College. Progressives also talk of extending the vote to 16- or 17-year-olds and ex-felons. They wish to further relax requirements for voter identification, same-day registration and voting, and undocumented immigrants voting in local elections.

The 2016 victory of Donald Trump shocked the left. It was entirely unexpected, given that experts had all but assured a Hillary Clinton landslide. Worse still for those on the left, Trump, like George W. Bush in 2000 and three earlier winning presidential candidates, lost the popular vote.

From 2017 on, Trump has sought to systematically dismantle the progressive agenda that had been established by his predecessor, Barack Obama — often in a controversial and unapologetic style.

The furor over the 2016 Clinton loss and the new Trump agenda, the fear that Trump could be re-elected, and anger about the Electoral College have mobilized progressives to demand changes to the hallowed traditions of electing presidents.

The Electoral College was designed in part to ensure that candidates at least visited the small and often rural states of America. The generation of the Founding Fathers did not want elections to rest solely with larger urban populations. The Electoral College balances out the popular vote.

 

 

 

 

The founders were also terrified of radical democracies of the past, especially their frenzied tendencies to adopt mob-like tactics.