Central link to Electoral Infrastructure

PENNSYLVANIA
Roberta's Opinion can also be found online at  Central link to electoral infrastructure
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To the Editor, The Daily Item.com:

I read with interest Joe DeChristopher’s analysis of the Electoral College (Jan 9). He covers important history and cites two widely repeated questions. But I think he drops the ball at the end.

IN BRIEF: So inadequate were the Articles of Confederation (1777-1788), with their talk of Indians and pirates and postal roads, and a government that could set weights and measures but not levy taxes, nor set a national currency, nor call up an army, that the Founders feared the country would collapse without a course correction. That led to the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention in the summer of 1787.
 
The Federalist Papers - The Greatest of Explanations
The only way to bring the new document into being was for it to be ratified by the States. In The Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay draw countless parallels between the proposed operating system and those established within different States. These and other articles were widely disseminated throughout the country. Townspeople would gather and listen as a literate neighbor read out loud the latest message.
 
With all that was at stake, there was still resistance to such a power transfer from the States, including from Patrick Henry himself. One skeptic predicted that US senators elected for a six-year term would move their families to Washington and become a permanent fixture. Touché.
 
Survival of each of the States and of a New Nation were at Stake
What transpired at the Philadelphia convention was against a backdrop of national survival. The Founders did everything they could think of to limit the growth of slavery and still have the country hold together. It would take another half-century for an American President to conclude that continued slavery and survival of the Union were incompatible. Lincoln was labeled a “Black Republican” by secessionists. We know the price he paid.
 
Until the last few decades civics education taught process and details, but more important, it instilled in students a measure of common ground. Now we get gimmicks like National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC). Spoiler alert: it’s anything but constitutional. NPVIC proposes an end run around the Constitution Article V, the process for amending our operating documents. Moreover, each state that has joined NPVIC, including mine, has done so in violation of their own state constitution’s residency requirements for voting.

Our States are Fairly Represented in the Federation
Regarding the (tired) idea that small States are over-represented: California alone has 55 electoral votes, more than the total electoral votes of the 12 smallest states scattered across the country, half of which are very liberal.
 
To debate the Electoral College vs NPVIC is an attempt to equate the known with the purely aspirational. It’s easy to reach for that Smiley Face when we think reality has let us down. Most such arguments stem, I think, from those who view the Electoral College as a dangling appendage rather than a central link in America’s electoral infrastruture.

DeChristopher knows better, which makes his conclusion disappointing. 


Roberta Schlechter
Portland, OR

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