The Mirage of the Popular vote

The founding Fathers created our electoral college system to force Presidential candidates to win states, not so much individual votes. They wanted candidates to campaign in every region of the country. They purposely did not want a national popular vote. Indeed, a national popular vote runs counter to their notion of Federalism.

The electoral system combines a popular vote within each state. So, if a candidate wins the popular vote in a state he gets its electoral college votes. In effect we have 50, plus the District of Columbia, separate elections. The results are tallied next month by the Electoral college.

In our system, every state gets at least 3 electoral votes, which guarantees they have something to offer a Presidential candidate. In effect a reason to come to the state to campaign.

Lately I hear lots of Democrats complaining that it is unfair that Hillary won the national popular vote but lost the election. They now have a cause, get rid of the electoral college. And to buffer the cause many ignorant liberals claim that the electoral college was designed to preserve slavery. Funny up until last month they never mentioned it.

But beyond the Constitutional reality of our system is the fact that liberals live on top of liberals. What I mean by that is that liberal voters are packed into a few states, albeit big states. States like New York, Illinois and California. Those states do have a lot of electoral votes, but driving up the popular votes for the Democrat candidate does not translates into any more electoral college votes.

In our Federal system those three states, New York, Illinois and California translate into 6 Senate seats. By comparison North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming also claim 6 Senate seats. Now I don’t think that there is anything unfair about that. We have a Federal system which offered every State two Senate seats to enter the Union. There is a process to change the Constitution, but why would the small to mid-sized states want to cede more power to New York, Illinois and California?

Now what if liberals could manage to move people out of New York, Illinois and California, spread them throughout the country. Would that make the country more liberal? Would that guarantee Democrats win the White House?

I doubt it. The transplanted blue stators are likely to adopt the voting patterns of their new state. They start paying less in taxes, face less regulations and mandates, and pretty soon they shake the murrain of political correctness. It is just as likely as not that the Californian transplanted to Alabama will pretty soon start to vote like an Alabamian.