Friday, October 20, 2017

The Democrats vs. Electoral College is just the latest distraction

Image result for electoral college images

We’ve been dealing with one distraction after another since the experts got the 2016 election wrong.  
The latest example is a court challenge to the Electoral College, as we see in this report by Fred Lucas
A liberal-led push to overhaul the Electoral College could be moving from the op-ed pages to the courtroom, as a Harvard professor who flirted with a dark-horse Democratic presidential bid last year vows litigation to change the system.
Criticism of the Electoral College was resurgent in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss. Clinton recently said she wants the system “eliminated.” 
The latest effort isn’t aimed at dismantling the structure entirely – but rather, the winner-take-all system used by 48 states in awarding electors, which ends up focusing presidential races on a handful of battlegrounds.
 
“With a winner-take-all, most of America is ignored,” Professor Lawrence Lessig said in previewing his legal case — which, like any challenge to the Electoral College, faces a steep uphill climb.    
Lessig, though, argues the system violates the 14th Amendment’s one-man-one-vote principle. 
Currently, all but two states award all electors to the winner of the state’s popular vote. 
Lessig said 24 people have volunteered to be plaintiffs, though he’s still deciding which states to focus on.
“We are looking for a Republican from a blue state whose vote never counts and a Democrat from a red state whose vote never counts,” he said.
So I guess that the left is looking for a Roe v. Wade to declare the Electoral College unconstitutional.
For the record, I think that the Electoral College votes should be done on a congressional district-by-district basis. I think that such an approach would reflect the national vote better than a state-by-state basis.
Nevertheless, the Electoral College is the system we have and the one that decides elections.   
Also, and this is the point that the Clinton 2016 and Gore 2000 supporters always overlook, there is no guarantee that their candidate would have won under a popular vote approach.     
As I recall President George W. Bush saying years ago, he would have campaigned differently under a popular vote system. He would have spent more time courting an extra 500,000 votes in Texas rather than fighting for Arkansas’ 5 electoral votes.
Hillary Clinton had a lot of problems in 2016. She didn’t lose over 3,000 counties because of the Electoral College!
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