Raymond: A sort of pre-refutation of Mr. Paine’s thesis can be found here.
From T. Paine at Saving Common Sense:
Today is the day that the electors from each state cast their votes for the next president via the Electoral College. This is the actual process that determines who will be president; not the popular democratic vote.
Donald J. Trump, who “lost the popular vote,” as we have been reminded ad nauseum from many of our brothers and sisters on the left will nonetheless be elected as The United States of America’s 45th chief executive today.
With all the whining and confusion surrounding the Electoral College vs. the popular vote, I figured it was worthwhile to take a look at the genius of our Founding Fathers and why they set things up the way that they did.
No matter how you try to phrase it, you are still advocating for an anti-democratic system that grants smaller states more power than larger states by population and punishes people for living in cities instead of being spread out. It was created for a reason, but it is not “genius.” Jerry already did a fine job of arguing for my position on your blog, but I have a bit to add:
I resent that my vote (i.e. my desires) is valued at a fraction of that of a voter in a small state. There is no argument that you could make to convince me that this unequal treatment is acceptable and I would not expect a Republican to feel differently if the situation were reversed.
As for state representation, we already have Congress, which grants every state two Senators and at least one Representative regardless of population. (This is sort of ridiculous in the first place, as a state could have a population of only 3 and still have 3 Congressmen–just because it’s a state!) Supreme Court Justices are appointed with the joint approval of the President and Senators. So it’s OK for the remaining office–the one for which everyone can vote–to actually represent a majority of people in the country. I would even argue that a president chosen by popular vote is a very important balance to our state-based legislature. The actual majority of voters should not be so casually and callously disregarded.
It’s important to remember that Trump’s margin of victory in some states was *very* small. In Michigan, for example, he won by fewer than 12k of over 4.5 million votes. Meanwhile, Clinton’s margin of victory in California was significant: over 3.3 million more votes out of over 12 million. (Our winner-take-all electoral system disguises these details.) So even if I found your argument about states and heterogeneity compelling, it wouldn’t really apply here. States like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania–states that would have allowed Clinton to win, had she just gotten a few more votes in each–are clearly split quite evenly, so Trump can’t really be said to represent them any better than Clinton. On the other hand, Clinton definitely represents California and New York better than Trump does. This is a serious problem with our system.
You fear that using the popular vote would lead to candidates ignoring small states in favor of large ones, but every vote would count in that system. It would be unwise to ignore the small states, especially when the margin of victory in elections can be a mere 500k votes, as in 2000. Besides: even if you were right, it’s not much different from candidates giving more attention to swing states, as they do now.
Finally, you speak of keeping the country united, but that is empty rhetoric. Our electoral system is divisive in its apparent unfairness and we have only become more divided by the 2000 and 2016 elections. In any case, with a leader like Trump, there can’t be any unity.