Unconstitutional

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows:

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

So says the United States Constitution with regards to how the election of the Presidency is supposed to be determined. The Founding Fathers devised this method, known to all of us as the electoral college, to prevent our nation from becoming mob rule. Because of this, we are truly a representative republic, not a democracy. In fact, the Founding Fathers found pure democracy so vile that the common epithet and insult that was exchanged amongst them was 'democrat.'

Why do you I bring this up, you ask? Because there is an unconstitutional movement afoot in many states to abrogate this paragraph in the Constitution. In several legislatures, bills have been proposed, and in some cases, passed, to cast all of that state's electoral votes to the candidate that wins the nationwide majority vote. This creates a de facto popular vote for President.

What's wrong with that, you ask? I'm glad you asked because this is perhaps the most important issue we face today but gets the least media coverage. Our Founding Fathers recognized that directly electing the President, the only nationwide office for which we vote, would mean that the most populous cities in this nation would decide who would be President.

I personally don't want New York City, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco deciding who is going to be President. And, if you are one of those that are okay with that misguided arrangement but don't live in any of those cities, how will you feel when no Presidential candidate ever campaigns outside of any of those cities - because he doesn't have to?

That's right. If you live in flyover country, which is anywhere between those cities listed above, you will never see a Presidential candidate anywhere near you or ever ask for your opinion on anything. If you thought that your vote doesn't count now with the electoral college in place, wait until it becomes circumvented by these unconstitutional state laws making the election a popularity contest.

The Founding Fathers intended to ensure that our government was a government by the people, with the consent of the governed. The Constitution dictates the structure and procedures to maintain this but, beginning in 1861, the federal government threw most of those rules under the bus and usurped much of the power of the state and the people. The next major power grab by the federal government was in 1913 with the passage of the income tax and direct election of US senators amendments to the Constitution. At least that power grab was accomplished via Constitutional means regardless of whether it was in the spirit of the Founding Fathers' intent.

What was detestable about 1913's acts was the codification of the confiscatory tax system that we are shackled with today and the loss of the final piece of equality amongst the states. The Senate was always intended to place each state on equal footing with every other state, regardless of population. With the advent of direct election of Senators, the states lost their voice in the federal government and the Senate, because of special interest money, no longer represent the state or its people very effectively.

This also paved the way for the next federal government power grab - the New Deal. The New Deal was the largest government expansion in our history (at that point in history - Obama's not done yet.) Now, not only are US Senators not influenced by their home states, the unaccountable, burgeoning federal bureaucracy is making policy as law - strictly unconstitutional.

Circumventing the electoral college would be the final nail in the coffin for our republic. By essentially making the President directly elected by the majority of the national popular vote, the state and its people will have given their sovereignty away. They lose their voice. They gave up their power to select the chief executive to New York City, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

If you are comfortable with that unconstitutional arrangement, maybe you should move to one of these bastions of statist beliefs. As for me, here in flyover country, I won't stand for it. If you have half a brain and any love of liberty, you won't stand for it either. Sic semper tyrannis.