Constitution: Identify the rights of individual citizens, Limit the powers of the Federal Government

The Constitution was designed to identify the rights of individual citizens, limit the powers of the Federal Government and assign the remaining rights of governance to the States. As such, the people had a House of Representatives (through popular vote) to represent their interests and the States selected members of the Senate (through their state legislature) to represent their interests. The Electoral College was designed to provide citizens and States (both of whom had an interest in the Federal Government) a part in the selection of the President by giving each State the number of electors based on its delegation to Congress (House and Senate).

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The Founders’ concern was that without the Electoral College system, more populated States (VA or PA) would dictate to the rest of the country who would be the President. Although the selection of Senators was changed to provide direct vote by the citizens of each state, no subsequent change was made to the Electoral College. If the prevailing “liberal” view of using only the popular vote to select the President were in place today, the metropolitan counties around Los Angeles (1,410,000 more votes for Ms. Clinton over Mr. Trump) and San Francisco (1,380,000 more votes for Ms. Clinton over Mr. Trump) would have selected the President of the United States. Thus, not just one state but only 2 metropolitan areas of the entire country would have decided the 2016 Presidential election. This would negate the votes of the people of nearly 2,700 counties in this country who voted a majority for Mr. Trump and give the election to Ms. Clinton who received a majority of votes in roughly 443 counties. I believe our Founders “got it right” and I hope it will remain this way for many years.

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