Ditching Electoral College would allow California to impose imperial rule on a colonial America
warns
Michael Barone in the Washington Examiner (cheers to Instapundit's
Stephen Green).
… for the first time in the nation's history the most populous state was a
political outlier, voting at one extreme in the national political
spectrum.
… Well, yeah, you might say. California has been called the Left
Coast for quite a while. Just about everyone in Silicon Valley except
Peter Thiel and in Hollywood except Pat Sajak supported Clinton. White
middle class families have been pretty well priced out of the state by
high taxes and housing costs, and the Hispanic and Asian immigrants who
have replaced them vote far more Democratic.
… In the nine elections before that and after California passed New York
to become the most populous state in 1963, the average of California's
Democratic and Republican percentages was never more than 5 points off
the national figures.
… In this respect it resembles New York, the most populous state in every
Census from 1820 to 1960. In elections 1856 to 1960, New York's
Democratic and Republican percentages seldom varied more than 5 points
from the national average.
… The fact that New York voted much like the nation as a whole
meant there were few elections when the popular vote winner lost in the
Electoral College. In the two exceptions, 1876 and 1888, the popular
vote winner was a New Yorker.
If California continues to occupy one extreme of the national
political spectrum, there may well be more such splits. At least unless
and until the Democratic Party figures it needs more to make a case with
more appeal beyond California if it wants to win 270 electoral votes.
All of which prompts renewed arguments about the Electoral
College. The case for abolishing it is simple: Every American's vote
should count the same. But it won't happen. Two-thirds of each house of
Congress and 38 of the 50 state legislatures will never go along.
The case against abolition is one suggested by the Framers'
fears that voters in one large but highly atypical state could impose
their will on a contrary-minded nation. That largest state in 1787 was
Virginia, home of four of the first five presidents. New York and
California, by remaining closely in line with national opinion up
through 1996, made the issue moot.
California's 21st century veer to the left makes it a live issue again.
In a popular vote system, the voters of this geographically distant and
culturally distinct state, whose contempt for heartland Christians
resembles imperial London's disdain for the "lesser breeds" it governed,
could impose something like colonial rule over the rest of the nation.
Sounds exactly like what the Framers strove to prevent.
