Hillary Clinton won the White House in 2016, like Al Gore in 2000. The Electoral College robbed them. Majority will should reign supreme.
So says a sour grapes ideology driving The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact movement. Composed of 11 blue states and the District of Columbia, each member pledges to give all future electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the popular vote. Colorado is likely to be the 12th member soon, which would bring the compact to 181 combined votes. It would not become active without membership totaling 270, the number needed to win an election.
State legislatures ratified the Twelfth Amendment in 1804, codifying today’s electoral system. Five presidents, starting with John Quincy Adams in 1824, took office after losing the popular vote.
James Madison feared the popular vote would empower special interest urban “factions” to dominate small states in elections. French historian Alexis de Tocqueville called it the “tyranny of the majority.”
To grasp today’s urban-rural divide, consider New York’s recent open celebration of late-term abortion. The pink lights on One World Trade Center nauseated Bible Belt Christians, known to urbanites as flyover rubes.
Consider Denver, with a metro population 10 times larger than the entire state headcount of conservative neighbor Wyoming. Denver favors zero-emission car mandates. Pot stores outnumber McDonald’s 12-to-1. The City Council voted 11-1 to start a heroine injection house. The May ballot contains a bill of rights for the homeless and a measure to legalize psychedelic mushrooms.
Urban elites want to outlaw coal; rural miners would lose their jobs.
Rural America’s need for the constitutional hedge against urban domination has never seemed more crucial.
The Twelfth Amendment represents only one of the checks on the democratic concept of majority rule. The Bill of Rights protects individuals from majorities that might tread on speech, religion, self-defense, property rights and more.
Electoral College defenders have an uphill fight against the perceived virtue of unchecked majority rule. In a perpetual moronization of the culture, schools and colleges conflate “democracy” with freedom and patriotism. They seldom explain the limited role of democratic process in a free country founded for the glory of individuals and states. This makes the popular vote an easy concept to pitch.
Subverting the Twelfth Amendment threatens America’s diverse mix of urban-rural culture, industry, values and trends and gives sustained control to growing legions of urban progressives who sneer at Mayberry from 30,000 feet.
