Yes, the Electoral College is once again under attack.\u00a0 The attackers feel they are close to claiming victory, but they are far from achieving their goal.\u00a0 Truth remains to be told.<\/p>\n
Once again, a group of modern day revisionists have decided that they are far wiser than the geniuses who wrote the U.S. Constitution more than 220 years ago.\u00a0 They\u2019ve decided that, if the tried and proven method our Founding Fathers gave us for selecting our national leaders is not entirely perfect, or (more importantly) if it doesn\u2019t produce the sort of leaders who happen to agree with their liberal view of the way things ought to be, it must be because the Founders erred in creating the Electoral College.\u00a0<\/p>\n
An organization called National Popular Vote (NPV) has launched an effort to create a compact among states whose combined electoral votes represent a simple majority of the 538 votes in the Electoral College.\u00a0 Their goal is quite simple.\u00a0 If they can produce an agreement among states with a combined total of at least 270 electoral votes to automatically assign their electoral votes to the presidential\/vice presidential slate receiving a plurality of the national popular vote, the Electoral College will then become meaningless.<\/p>\n
Among liberals, the Electoral College has always been one of the least favorite institutions of our federal system.\u00a0 Liberals being what they are, they could never quite grasp the notion that under our system of government the states are supreme<\/em> and that it is the states<\/em>, not the citizens<\/em> of the individual states, who select our national leaders.\u00a0 That concept is inimical to their desire for an all-powerful central government.\u00a0<\/p>\n In spite of\u2026 or perhaps because<\/em> of\u2026 the best efforts of legions of social science teachers over many decades, few Americans understand the purpose of the Electoral College or the role that it plays in the selection of the president and vice president.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Founding Fathers had some very specific reasons for creating the Electoral College.\u00a0 Aside from their insistence that the president and vice president be elected by the states<\/em>, and not by the people<\/em>, their primary concern was that a foreign power might one day attempt to achieve through corruption and political intrigue, that which they could not achieve on the battlefield.\u00a0<\/p>\n As Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist Paper No. 68, \u201cThese most deadly adversaries of republican government (cabal, intrigue, etc.)\u201d might come from many quarters, \u201cbut chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils.\u00a0 How could they better gratify this than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union?\u201d<\/p>\n The Founders were so concerned that none but a \u201cnatural born\u201d citizen should ever ascend to the presidency or the vice presidency that they sought to devise a system wherein a small group of men (yes, this was pre-women\u2019s suffrage)\u2026 prominent in their communities, well-informed, and trusted by their fellow citizens\u2026 would be delegated the responsibility for selecting the president and vice president.\u00a0<\/p>\n The alternative they settled on was the Electoral College, an independent body consisting of citizen electors chosen for the sole purpose of selecting the president and vice president. The manner in which presidential electors were to be chosen was left solely<\/em> and exclusively<\/em> to the legislatures of the various states, and neither the governors of the states, nor the courts, federal or state, were given any role whatsoever in that process.\u00a0<\/p>\n Unfortunately, the Electoral College has fallen short of expectations in recent elections.\u00a0 The idea that a foreign power might purchase the friendship or the acquiescence of a President of the United States was never a major concern until 1996 when Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and other Democrats were the recipients of large sums of cash from agents of the Peoples Republic of China.\u00a0 Those illegal contributions were not disclosed until well after Clinton and Gore were reelected and inaugurated for a second term.\u00a0 Would Democratic electors have withheld their electoral votes, had they known?\u00a0 It makes for a very interesting speculation, but knowing Democrats as we do it can be assumed that they would not.<\/p>\n In 2004 the Democrats nominated Senator John Kerry.\u00a0 While claiming to be a Vietnam War hero, Kerry refused to release 100 pages of his military records relating to the circumstances surrounding his discharge from the U.S. Navy.\u00a0 Had it been learned conclusively that Kerry was dishonorably discharged in 1971 or 1972, would Democratic electors\u2026 veterans of World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and Desert Storm\u2026 have cast their votes for him?\u00a0 We\u2019ll never know.<\/p>\n In 2008, Democratic electors were forewarned that Barack Obama\u2019s qualifications under Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution were much in doubt.\u00a0 When the Constitution was drafted the Founders made it quite clear that only \u201cnatural born\u201d U.S. citizens could serve as president or vice president.\u00a0 Yet, Democratic electors ignored the indisputable fact that Obama was born to an American mother and a Kenyan father.\u00a0 As a citizen of Kenya, a British crown colony, Barack Obama, Sr. passed on his British citizenship automatically, by descent, to his son, Barack Obama, Jr. (See Part 2, Section 5[1] of the British Nationality Act of 1948).\u00a0 Hence, Obama was born with dual US-British citizenship.\u00a0<\/p>\n Accordingly, Obama is a U.S. citizen but not a \u201cnatural born\u201d citizen as required by Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, making him ineligible to serve in the presidency.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Nor did the 2008 Democratic electors place any importance on the source of Obama\u2019s funds.\u00a0 As the date of the election approached in late October 2008, Obama announced that he had raised some $600 million from 2.5 million contributors, with one-fourth of the money, or $150 million coming from contributors of $2,000 to $2,300\u2026 approximately 65,000 individual contributors.\u00a0 The remainder of the $600 million ($450 million) was contributed by, as Obama insisted, those who contributed \u201c$10, $20, or $25\u2026 or whatever they could afford.\u201d<\/p>\n Any fourth grader\u2026 a level of education achieved by few Obama voters\u2026 could have calculated that $450 million cannot be contributed by 2.4 million people in $10, $20, or $25 amounts.\u00a0 The average contribution would have to be approximately $185.\u00a0 That has never happened before in American politics and it did not happen in 2008.\u00a0 Obama lied.<\/p>\n Finally, it was determined by investigative journalists that Obama\u2019s official reports to the Federal Election Commission contained no fewer than 66,383 contributions in odd amounts, such as $188.67, $1,542.06, $876.09, $388.67, etc., etc\u2026 obvious foreign currency conversions.\u00a0 However, upon interviewing randomly selected contributors, investigative journalists for NewsMax.com found that many Obama supporters were unaware that they had contributed that much money.\u00a0 The amounts of money reported were real, the contributors were fictitious.\u00a0 What was the source of Obama\u2019s campaign funds?\u00a0 It is unlikely that we will ever know.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n So the question arises, are these historical anomalies a product of a weakness in the system, or are they a product of shortcomings of the individuals who populate the system?<\/p>\n That question can be answered conclusively by placing the shoe on the other foot.\u00a0 In other words, what would Republican electors do if confronted with the candidacy of the current Governor of California,\u00a0presumptive president-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger, a native of Austria and the son of Austrian parents?\u00a0<\/p>\n There is no doubt whatsoever that the Schwarzenegger candidacy would be rejected.\u00a0 In fact, it is inconceivable that a Schwarzenegger candidacy would ever have made it past the Republican nominating convention.\u00a0 As a naturalized citizen, Schwarzenegger would have received no serious consideration by convention delegates.\u00a0 Unlike Democrats, Republicans care about constitutional principles and the rule of law.<\/p>\n Since the shortcomings of the presidential selection process in recent years can be shown conclusively to be related to human failings, as opposed to the failure of process, the National Popular Vote movement may wish to perform a valuable service to the nation by urging the legislatures of the various states to place criminal penalties on electors who violate their oath of office by failing to perform the necessary due diligence.<\/p>\n As Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers, \u201cIt was\u2026 desirable that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station\u2026\u00a0 A small number of persons, selected by their fellow citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to so complicated an investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n The members of the Electoral College are expected to \u201canalyze the qualities\u201d of presidential candidates and they are expected to \u201cpossess the information and discernment requisite to so complicated an investigation.\u201d\u00a0 This does not describe what Democrat electors have done in recent elections, nor does it describe the qualities and the characteristics that they have brought to the solemn responsibility they have been given.\u00a0 We don\u2019t need a better system; the system is not at fault.\u00a0 We just need Democratic electors who can put country above party.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yes, the Electoral College is once again under attack.\u00a0 The attackers feel they are close to claiming victory, but they are far from achieving their goal.\u00a0 Truth remains to be told. Once again, a group of modern day revisionists have … Continue reading