If the left is so confident that the tied has turned in the voting populace, then why do they continue to try to tinker with the electoral process? The truth is, despite the disgust in general with the Bush Presidency and his domestic policies, the general public will see know benefit in putting a party that deifys a wack job like Hugo Chavez.
From IBD:
Posted 5/31/2006
Politics: The Electoral College is a perennial favorite of those who think progress means abolishing institutions. But a constitutional amendment would be required to bury it. Now populists think they can just go around it.
Al Gore's 2000 loss to George W. Bush, in which the vice president won a majority of the nation's popular vote but lost the Electoral College, continues to vex the political left. No doubt it even helps explain the onetime Democratic standard-bearer's messianic behavior of late.
The sense of being robbed does peculiar things to people. It's even more upsetting to the delicate mind-set of politicians, who have spent their lives doing things to citizens that would be considered criminal but for their elected status.
Some of them may have lost high school debates in which they affirmed the abolitionist position, so they relish any chance to get back at the class star. An outfit called National Popular Vote, showing a genius for simplistic thinking, has come to their aid.
NPV's scheme would enlist state legislatures in an "interstate compact" to direct their Electoral College members to cast their votes for the popular winner of a presidential race. They figure that if they can get a majority of legislatures to join, they could avert the sort of "crisis" that made Gore a full-time crank rather than commander in chief.
On Tuesday the California Assembly voted to join the compact. Said Tom Umberg, Democrat chairman of the elections and appropriations committee: "When you're in first grade, if the person who got the second-most votes became class leader, the kids would recognize that this is not a fair system."
Now, if you proposed to a first-grade class that the team with the most runs in the ninth inning should win the game, some of the kids might agree. If you suggested to college students they needn't balance their checkbooks, we dare say a good many of them would nod their grateful agreement.
Umberg's logic is on that level, and yet we notice the august editorial boards of The New York Times and Chicago Sun-Times have bought into it. A Louisiana legislative committee and the Colorado Senate have approved the compact. The NPV virus has been hopping state lines.
A refresher tutorial: The Constitution's framers, determined to subordinate government to the people's will, knew that the people could be subverted by majoritarian madness. If simple majorities prevailed without check, then residents of small and rural states would be gravely disadvantaged.
The Electoral College, like the U.S. Senate with its two senators from each state, assures those Americans a measure of clout and voice. If tiny Delaware's Sen. Joseph Biden deep down wonders why his pontifications should be taken as seriously and undeservedly as they are, he can credit the framers for that.
While Assemblyman Umberg, et al. seek to turn the Electoral College into a vermiform appendix, wiser heads in his own party acknowledged after 9-11 that we all dodged a bullet by not installing Al Gore in the White House. Again, thank the Constitution's authors that our current president considers terrorism a greater threat than global warming.
Almost forgot: Article I, Section 10 bars any state from entering into a compact with another. Maybe they skip over that in law school these days.
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