Why We Need to Keep the Electoral College

By Douglas V. Gibbs

Author, Speaker, Instructor, Radio Host

As I prefer to put it, "The Electoral College protects us from the excesses of democracy."

While the political pundits, politicians, and mainstream media talking heads constantly refer to the United States as being a democracy, and the liberal left complaint about Trump's Presidential Election win has been "but Hillary won the popular vote!", the reality is the Electoral College is an ingenious way of protecting the United States from being just another failed pure democracy.  While there are some democratic processes in our system, originally intended only for local and State seats, and for choosing members of the United States House of Representatives, we are a republic.  As a republic we depend upon more than a mere vote to operate our system of government.  In a republic the responsibilities of the people, and the politicians, runs deeper and more extensively than the duties of We the People would be if we were a democracy.

Let me also remind you that when we say the Pledge of Allegiance, we don't pledge allegiance to the democracy for which the flag stands, but to the "republic for which it stands."

In a republic there are a series of checks and balances, and in our republic the voice of the States, and the people through their States, is a critical part of ensuring our American System operates properly.

On the surface, we must remember that the only reason Hillary won the popular vote was because of two States, New York and California.  Do we really want the big cities of those two States deciding the presidency, while discarding everyone else's votes?  In a system like ours, the Electoral College enables the smaller States to have a greater voice than they would in a National Popular Vote method of election.  States like New Hampshire or Iowa would no longer be important.  The candidates would simply try and convince the people of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia to vote for them in such a system.  Nobody else's votes would matter.

While the system was originally created to ensure a balance so that slave States and non-slave States didn't overpower the other, it also takes into consideration the need to ensure that rural States should have a strong enough voice to be heard, and shouldn't be drowned out by the pure numbers of the big cities whose interests may not be in line with the needs of other regions.

Dennis Prager also provides a video that explains the advantages of the Electoral College.  You can view it HERE.

As the Prager University video explains, "The Founders had no intention of creating a pure majority-rule democracy. They knew from careful study of history what most have forgotten today, or never learned: pure democracies do not work. They implode. Democracy has been colorfully described as two wolves and a lamb voting on what's for dinner. In a pure democracy, bare majorities can easily tyrannize the rest of a country. The Founders wanted to avoid this at all costs."

The video also points out, "...the system encourages coalition-building and national campaigning. In order to win, a candidate must have the support of many different types of voters, from various parts of the country. Winning only the South or the Midwest is not good enough. You cannot win 270 electoral votes if only one part of the country is supporting you. But if winning were only about getting the most votes, a candidate might concentrate all of his efforts in the biggest cities or the biggest states. Why would that candidate care about what people in West Virginia or Iowa or Montana think?"

The Electoral College is a large part of what makes this country exceptional, unique, and a republic.  It is imperative that we protect the Electoral College, and ensure that we do all we can to return to the original intent of the United States Constitution.

Read another article about the Electoral College HERE.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary