A Conservative’s Viewpoint Keep The Electoral College

Article by Bob Steinburg - July 25th, 2007
Edenton, North Carolina: Cradle of the Colony

Recently North Carolina State Senators took a giant step backward (in my view and that of most North Carolinians) when they passed SB 954, a Bill which would allow our state to join a “compact with unnamed states” to pool their votes for President. The Electoral College in North Carolina would be dead! This bill is driven by the Democrats and needs only to pass the House to become law, a House with a significant Democrat majority.

The Electoral College has been with us since the 19th century and has served our “Republic” well over all those years. The Electoral College is wisely intended to dilute the votes of population centers, whose concerns may be different than those from the majority of the country. Candidates therefore must appeal to different types of interests rather than those of any particular state or region, and, as a result, must pay attention to key “swing- states”.

With a strictly popular vote system, a candidate could be elected by a “large margin” in a “few states” over a person who appeals to a broader base and wins by “small margins” in “most states”. The possibility of a “demagogue” or “extremist” being elected, increases significantly with the dissolving of the Electoral College, where as a candidate who has a broad based appeal to much of the country, survives with the Electoral College.

The adoption of the SB 954, as passed by our Democrat controlled State Senate, will shift the focus to large cities at the expense of our rural areas. Keeping the Electoral College will continue to insure that a “distribution” of popular support wins the presidency, maintains the “Federal” character of the nation [Federalist Papers], enhances the status of minority groups, mitigates factors that can affect voter turnout [snow storm etc.], isolates election problems such as fraud, helps maintain the separation of powers and insures recourse upon the death or unsuitability of a candidate before he or she takes office.

This is, in my view, bad for North Carolina and most North Carolinians are outraged that such a thing could happen in our State. Call or write your elected officials TODAY before the Democrat controlled House, joins the Democrat controlled Senate and puts this “bad idea” into law.

The only question is not whether this law will become the law of North Carolina. It is whether the continuing slide towards pure democracy, mobocracy, can be stopped. When our nation was formed the geniuses that wrote our Constitution and framed our government listened to people such as John Locke, who invented the concept of balance of powers. Historians and government theorists that were concerned with freedom were petrified then of democracy, since it has a horrible history. The abuses of pure democracy are well known. The history of Greece during its period of pure democracy is a history of sliding towards tryants and dictators whenever democracy had been around for a while.

The famous summation of democracy is that it always ends badly as soon as the people think they can vote themselves a "free ride". Things like free medicine and free health care and free housing and free food and free clothing and a "living wage". When even the Republican party has gotten on this band wagon, you have to wonder if the natural optimism of America has become obsolete?

The real fear of abandoning the electoral college system is that it creates a nationwide motivation to steal every single vote that can be stolen. Currently, what value is there in the Democrat Party stealing votes in New York? They win New York and get all of its electoral votes easily, so the partisan and corrupt officials of the Democrat Party in New York have no excuse to steal votes. Turn the election of a President into a popular vote contest and every single corrupt official in every precinct in America now has motivation to steal every vote they can steal.

Jim Black stole the state of North Carolina for $100,000. Who is there that does not think there are public officials who will assure the stealing of the Presidency if this law becomes the law of the land?