Election Objection

Ever since Trump won the election on November 8th, the Left has been going nuts trying to find any way to discredit his win. One excuse they have passionately used is that he should not have won because Hillary won the popular vote and therefore she is the legitimate winner. In the aftermath of the election, many believe we should do away with our process, the electoral college. Before I share why the electoral college is the best process, everyone must understand how the electoral college works; a quick civics lesson if you will.

Our founding fathers wrote a brilliant document that our country is governed by, the Constitution. In this document, the process whereby we elect our leaders is clearly outlined. They knew that electing leaders based on a pure democracy model would not work and that using the majority vote method would lead to tyranny. That is why our government is made of up of three branches of government so there are checks and balances and why they created the 12th amendment, the electoral college. Each state is different in size, population, socioeconomic levels, etc. so there needed to be separate elections for each one. Even though every state has two senators, their representatives and their electors are based on the state’s population. So, when you are voting in your state, you are actually voting for the electors that represent the party of your choice. 

There are 51 separate elections, one in each state and one in D.C. The separate state elections cannot interfere with each other. State election rules and codes can be very different. For example, early voting rules, registration process, ballot qualifications and felon eligibility are just a few rules that each state can decide for themselves. In total, there are 538 electors and a candidate must get a total of 270 to win. This process ensures that a candidate cannot ignore some areas of the country and only concentrate on the heavily populated areas or areas that fit their demographic and platform. In order to achieve 270, a candidate needs all different kinds of voter support across the country. The electoral college was a brilliant solution in that it accomplished three major things; it encourages coalition building, gives a voice to both big and small states, and discourages voter fraud.

There are however, always those that think they know better than the founders and want to change things. Not surprisingly, complaints about the current process usually gets brought up in situations like the one we just had. The losing side cries “not fair” if their side won the popular vote. Hence was born the NPV or National Populist Vote movement. Many do not know about NPV. It is well funded and flies under the radar of mainstream media, but none the less, it is trying very hard to recruit support. The NPV movement wants to do exactly what our founders did not want to happen – award the presidency to the candidate with the most votes overall. Now while you might think that this sounds like a good idea at first, the method they are using to push this agenda is definitely not. Rather than lawfully amend the Constitution, the NPV movement wants to skirt around it. Their idea is that they would have every state sign a contract that says they would give their electors to the winner of the national vote instead of their states popular vote. For example, Democrat-heavy California would have had to give their electoral votes to Bush in 2004 even though Kerry won California by over 1 million votes. Can you image the outrage that would incite! 

The NPV idea will cause problems. It robs states of their sovereignty, decentralizes control over the election and opens the door for numerous complications and lawsuits. Voter fraud would also be much easier to pull off because it would be extremely difficult to trace fake or missing votes/ballots to the particular states. You could take away some here and add some there, etc. Lastly, candidates would concentrate only on the biggest cities and states and forget about the less populated and smaller ones. 

Just remember when someone is trying to sell you on the idea of getting behind the NPV movement, they can make it sound logical and more fair, but it isn’t. Our founding fathers, with their wisdom and insight, wrote a document that became the cornerstone of this fair, just, and free country. They included the electoral college for a reason. Based on the success of the United States of America over the last 240 years, I personally have no reason to doubt their judgment.