Electoral system denies tyranny of majority

We need the electoral system.

Don’t fall for the liberal literary slight of hand that we profess to be a democracy. We have never been a democracy! We are a democratic republic. The difference is we don’t vote directly for the president, we vote for the electors who in turn vote for the president.

The Founders of our nation were fully aware of the tyranny of the majority. If we had a straight democratic voting system, the states with the largest populations would always dominate the elections, so if you live in Iowa, Wyoming or North Dakota, your vote would always be dominated by New York and California. The Founders knew this and created the weighted system of the Electoral College. This is a winner-take-all system that once a threshold of votes are reached all the electoral votes are cast for one candidate.

Going into the election all the candidates knew the rules and campaigned accordingly. Now if the system were a straight democratic vote, each candidate would have spent more time in the states with the largest populations rather than the states with the largest electoral number.

Abolishing the Electoral College is the same wrong-headed thinking that says the Constitution should be abolished because it too is outdated? Should we look to other governments because they are far superior to our own? I don’t think so.

This story was originally published December 2, 2016 at 2:38 PM with the headline "Electoral system denies tyranny of majority."