We Still Need the Electoral College
THE PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY REPORT
We Still Need the Electoral College
by John and Andy Schlafly
November 15, 2016
Donald Trump won a spectacular victory, fair and square. Special thanks are due to his triumvirate of conservative advisers, Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, and David Bossie, who guided Trump through the intense thicket of media bias and inhuman smears.
Phyllis Schlafly is celebrating posthumously, and more than a few have wondered if she pulled some strings from above. Her vision in praising and endorsing Trump early and often was proven right in this stunning victory.
While Trump won a clear majority of the votes in the Electoral College, he did not win the most popular votes. Some liberals are engaging in sore-loser backbiting by falsely focusing on the meaningless outcome in the popular vote.
The Chicago Cubs did not score more runs than the Cleveland Indians in the World Series, yet the Cubs were declared the winner. Was that unfair, or does anyone challenge that result?
Of course not. A baseball team is not rewarded for running up the score in one game, and winning a game by 6-0 (as the Indians won game one) does not count any more than winning a game by 1-0 (as the Indians won game three).
Our Electoral College uses the same fair system as our national pastime. Hillary Clinton “ran up the score” in liberal states like California, New York, and Illinois, but that should not and did not give her any extra advantage in the election.
In illegal-immigration friendly California, Hillary Clinton defeated Donald Trump by more than 2 million votes, and ballots were not even fully counted by the end of last week. But the election results should not depend on how many votes a candidate can obtain in a liberal, insolvent state like California, and our Nation need not wait until all those votes are counted before declaring the winner.
Our Electoral College prevents tyranny by the majority, or giving one state so much influence over the others. Instead, our Founders wisely compartmentalized our Union such that each state, even tiny ones like New Hampshire, has an influence all its own.
This usually ensures that one candidate attains a majority of the Electoral College vote, even though none of the candidates garner a majority of the popular vote. In more than half of the presidential elections over the past quarter century, no candidate attained a majority of the popular vote.
Twice in the last five presidential elections the winner of the Electoral College did not receive more popular votes than his rival, but that is only because California is so one-sidedly Democrat. Without including California, the Republican candidates won the popular vote in three of the past five elections.
Our Nation should not be hostage to California’s refusal to enforce America’s immigration laws, even refusing to take reasonable steps to prevent illegals from voting. Likewise, we should not be victim to the Democratic political machines in large cities that are notorious for withholding their vote totals until late in the evening, to see how many votes they need to flip a result trending Republican.
Some fail to recognize that the Electoral College is the single greatest safeguard against voter fraud and a potential national crisis if there is a disputed presidential election outcome. Chicago can cheat all it wants in voting, as it has historically done, but that will not change the outcome today under the ingenuous system of our Electoral College.
Our Founders opposed tyranny by the majority, and the Bill of Rights stands against allowing a mere “majority vote” to impose its will on everyone else. The Electoral College is there for the same reason, to provide a buffer against the whims of the masses.
Opponents of the Electoral College could repeal it by hijacking a Convention of States, which is a euphemistic term for a new constitutional convention. While promoters of the Convention of States deny repealing the Electoral College as their goal, they do not disclose the identity of their financial backers so there is no way to know for sure what their real underlying intent is.
The wonderful Republican Platform of 2016, which helped carry Donald Trump to his victory, rejects any “scheme to abolish or distort the procedures of the Electoral College,” including the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. That compact, enacted by ten states so far, attempts to bypass the Electoral College without changing the Constitution.
To the liberals demanding for an end to the Electoral College, why aren’t they also demanding that the Chicago Cubs return their World Series trophy? For the same reason it makes sense not to allow a baseball team to benefit from running up the score in a single game of the series, it also makes sense not to allow a liberal presidential candidate to benefit from running up her vote tally in a few liberal states.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) whose 27th book, The Conservative Case for Trump, was published posthumously on September 6.
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