Were it not for the Electoral College, presidential candidates could act as if many Americans don’t even exist. In short, the Founders were looking out for the people in “flyover country” long before there were airplanes to fly over them.
Tyranny of the majority definition plus#
As the website for the National Archives notes, “Your state’s entitled allotment of electors equals the number of members in its Congressional delegation: one for each member in the House of Representatives plus two for your Senators.” That’s because there are 538 votes altogether. Most people who watch the election returns know that a candidate must secure 270 electoral votes to win. “It prevents candidates from wining an election by focusing only on high-population urban centers (the big cities), ignoring smaller states and the more rural areas of the country - the places that progressives and media elites consider flyover country.” “The Electoral College is a very carefully considered structure the Framers of the Constitution set up to balance the competing interests of large and small states,” writes Hans von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election Commission. But it’s important that the rest of us know. Boies and his fellow attorneys are really ignorant of why we have an Electoral College. citizens have been denied their constitutional right to an equal vote in presidential elections,” said David Boies, an attorney who represented former Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 election. The latest attack comes via new lawsuits filed in federal courts in four states (Massachusetts, California, South Carolina and Texas). They see the Electoral College as an impediment to their political victories, therefore it’s got to go. Clinton captured more of the popular vote than Donald Trump did. After all, as they never tire of pointing out, Mrs. Their attacks on the College are nothing new, but the defeat of Hillary Clinton in 2016 renewed their fury. We have a House of Representatives, where the number of members is greater for more populous states (which obviously favors those states), and the Senate, where every state from Rhode Island and Alaska to California and New York have exactly two representatives (which keeps less-populated states from being steamrolled).īeing a republic, we also don’t pick our president through a direct, majority-take-all vote. That led, most notably, to the bicameral structure of our legislative branch. A system of government carefully balanced to safeguard the rights of both the majority and the minority. The Founders were determined to forestall the inherent dangers of what James Madison called “the tyranny of the majority.” So they constructed something more lasting: a republic. As the saying goes, a democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner. That’s all well and good for the majority, but what about the minority? Don’t they have rights that deserve respect? In a democracy, of course, the majority rules. The Founding Fathers knew their history well, so they knew better than to establish the U.S. It’s a republic.īig deal, you say? If you care about your rights, it is. People often refer to the United States as a democracy, but technically speaking, that’s not true.
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