Electors Settle Election

The Electoral College, which progressives wish to abolish, on Monday gave president-elect Joe Biden a majority of its vote, according to an Associated Press story.

The abolition of the Electoral College in favor of a popular selection of the president would throw national elections into the hands of states with large population centers such as New York and California, unsettling for future generations a problem the Electoral College was designed to solve.

The founders of the Republic knew that national elections decided by large population centers would necessarily disenfranchise small states such as Connecticut and Rhode Island.

Presently, electoral votes allocated to states are based on the census. The number of electoral votes are apportioned to states according to the number of senators and representatives in their U.S. Congressional delegation -- two votes for its senators in the U.S. Senate plus a number of votes equal to the number of its Congressional districts.

In the modern period, the abolition of the Electoral College in favor of popular vote elections would concentrate all political power within eastern and western seaboard states, a geographical power parenthesis largely controlled by rusting, urban centered, progressive Democrats. That is why the popular vote option is intensely popular among ideological disposed progressive Democrats and supportive sectors of populist progressivism among an increasingly left-leaning media.

Monday’s elevation of Biden to president-elect by the Electoral College extends his presidential affirmation beyond seaboard power centers of what used to be called the “vital center” of American politics. Presidential election by popular vote is popular principally among larger population centers now controlled by progressive Democrats, progressivism representing the triumph of ideology over pragmatic politics.

The move to abolish the Electoral College has and should be resisted by 1) smaller states, 2) both Democrats and Republican politicians who favor a broad political franchise, and 3) small “r” pragmatic politicians who understand that narrow ideologies spell the death of democracy. “One man, one vote”  is a fine, democratic ambition, but the ambition is effectively frustrated by adopting a system in which election to office is determined by large population centers, effectively narrowing the franchise to demographic and geographical areas of the country largely controlled by outmoded 19^th and early 20^th century urban political bosses. Tails in democratic structures should not wag dogs.

One supposes – wrongly – that congressional representatives from smaller states would NOT support the replacement of the Electoral College with a popular vote measure according to which electors in the states would be bound to vote in favor of presidents, like Hillary Clinton, who have received a majority of popular votes. The popular vote mandate would simply disenfranchise smaller states. The present widely distributed presidential vote would narrow to a few national population centers. Constituents represented by the Connecticut’s all Democrat US Congressional Delegation would become vote vassals dominated by New York and California.

In 2017, the Yale Daily News reported, Connecticut U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal appeared at his alma mater to support the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact [H.B. 5434]: “Blumenthal noted that Connecticut is one of only four states in the Northeast that has not passed legislation committing the state to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, an agreement between 10 states and the District of Columbia in which member states pledge to award their electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the national popular vote.”

A CTMirror opinion piece written by a member of the National Popular Vote Connecticut Working Group noted: “At a National Popular Vote CT rally in New Haven, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal spoke passionately about the need to let the will of the majority prevail when electing the president, just as it does in all other elections for higher office. Sen. Chris Murphy has been on the record supporting the compact since December.”

These are passionate, inescapably committed affirmations that, as inescapably, argue against a process which, since the institution of the Electoral College, has equitably distributed political influence to states such as Connecticut.

Ironically, Blumenthal agreed with those in New Haven who considered the Electoral College “undemocratic” and urged support for its abolition in favor of a popular vote initiative that would make Connecticut a vassal in the northeast to large population centers such as New York. Support among Connecticut politicians in favor of a National Popular Vote Interstate Compact raises the troubling question: What interests are supported when progressive representatives choose to abandon a political enfranchising Electoral College in favor of a faux-democratic system that disenfranchises their own constituents?  

Who, Blumenthal's constituents may wish to know, elected him to trade the interests of his own constituents for a mess of political pottage deployed by Democrat politicians in major urban strongholds across the country?