A long-languished letter

[Way back when, before C19 conquered the media, I was taken to task in its lead 13mar20 column by a Union reader about my views on the electoral college and democracy.  I submitted the following rebuttal which became a coronavirus casualty.  Its posting here is for the record, and an acknowledgement that not all my submissions get published.  So there.  gjr]

An Electoral College dialogue continued

Mr Dick Sciaroni wrote ‘Electoral College reform – it’s up to us’ in the 13mar20 Union, a measured and civil response to my 7mar20 Union column, ‘Democracy Destroys the Electoral College’, wherein he concludes with, “Is it time to reform the Electoral College system? Perhaps. It’s up to all of us, the citizens, to decide. That means dialogue, not diatribe.”  However, a more careful read of what I wrote would reveal that nowhere did I oppose a national dialogue on the continued utility of the Electoral College in the governance of our republic.  What I do oppose is the current approach to its sub-rosa and de facto elimination through the little known National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

Mr Sciaroni writes, “The Founders’ decision how they should choose a president should have no overriding claim on 21st century America such that we cannot change it. After all, we are talking about our government. It’s ours. Why can’t we change it?”  In this he implies that I oppose any such change.  I don’t, but I do oppose what’s going on now.  The NPVIC is intended to surreptitiously sidestep a national dialogue, and most certainly subvert a constitutional process, through the leftwing mainstream media’s daily diatribes that call for a precipitous elimination of the Electoral College.  I highly doubt that more than one in a hundred Americans are aware of the NPVIC’s existence, its role in eliminating our EC, and current progress toward that goal – all happening without the national dialogue which Mr Sciaroni and I would welcome. 

In his piece, nowhere did Mr Sciaroni acknowledge that my arguments were directed against imposing governance by direct democracy on large diverse populations, in accord with our Framers.  Instead he did repeat the Left’s talking points that the configuration of the EC by our Framers was a devious stratagem to keep wealthy white men in power, and therefore is now a dated construct of our government that needs major overhaul, and perhaps removal altogether.

And his main point about the pervasive role of money in our elections ignores recent evidence that undermines his arguments.  In 2016 Hillary outspent Trump by far, in the current election Steyer, Bloomberg, and Bernie have all outspent our former VP Biden, and most certainly President Trump.  Yes, modern campaigns demand more funding to get out the message, but the evidence at hand is that it still continues to be the message, not the money that shapes the voters’ preferences.  In sum, such evidence should weigh heavily to counter Mr Sciaroni’s “final analysis” wherein he maintains that “the downside of the Electoral College is that it works hand-in-glove with moneyed interests to give a small number of people – not surprisingly, white males – access to the presidency of a country in which they are the decided minority.”  By all means, let us all talk about this.

George Rebane is a retired systems scientist in Nevada County who blogs on Rebane’s Ruminations.

Comments

[rl crabb]

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." -Geo. Orwell

[scenes]

"The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history." -Geo. Orwell

"Politics is poopadoodle" -Fred Bird

[Scott O]

crabb 12:58 - And the EC is helping to keep us safe from that sort of govt.
Mob rule will ensure the most stratified society with the biggest wealth gaps.

[rl crabb]

As I recall how that story went, it was the minority who took over and rewrote the laws to favor their own interests.

[rl crabb]

And those minority states already have disproportionate representation with the Senate.

[scenes]

"As I recall how that story went, it was the minority who took over and rewrote the laws to favor their own interests."

Are you referring to the electoral college? It was largely a compromise between a popular vote and using Congress to select a President. 'The Laws' generally? Everyone wants to favor their own interests, whether it's the public employees unions, NAACP, or Monsanto. One problem erupts, of course, when the government is so large that you are swinging an enormous amount of resources with those laws. It never occurred to the Founding Fathers that the economy would be controlled by government to the extent it is. Oh well.

OTOH, does it seem right that illegal aliens can drive the number of members of Congress or Electoral College votes?

Want to change things? Better get that Constitutional Convention or Amendment effort going, chop chop. This country ain't gonna socialize itself.

[Scott O]

crabb 6:53 and 6:43 - Animal Farm was the story of how communism took over Russia. They never had a constitution and elections like we have in the US.
California has the mob rule you want, yet it also has the most poverty, biggest wealth gap and rule by the elite. The mob have the House and the smaller population states have the Senate. It's supposed to be that way for a good reason. If you get rid of the EC and the Senate is run by the Dems, we will quickly become a much larger version of California. California has the feds to bail them out. If the US becomes California, then who will bail us out?
China?

[scenes]

Scotto: " They never had a constitution and elections like we have in the US."

Not the same, but they did have both. Constitutions in 1924 and (googles quickly) 1936.

(saying the obvious, mea culpa)
It seems to me that the main difference isn't so much the system of government, but whether resources are controlled by a single group (or corporation for that matter). In the case of the USSR, and an increasingly socialistic USA, control (or ownership) is centralized for all kindsa good reasons, but you always end up with dachas at the lake for the elite and breadlines for everyone else. The alternate method of free markets results in a degree of unfairness also, but you get to avoid the gulags and beheadings, plus there are more chances for meritocracy.

But, seriously, this time it'll be different. We'll have Real Socialism(tm).

Sometimes I think we should have a monthly Coffee With An Eastern Bloc Guy. The local liberals can hang out with someone who grew up in a Warsaw Pact nation and see what life was like when experiment hits reality.

[scenes]

Here's one for Mr. Crabb, from the 1936 Soviet Constitution:

ARTICLE 139. Elections of deputies are direct: all Soviets of Working People's Deputies, from rural and city Soviets of Working People's Deputies to the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R., inclusive, are elected by the citizens by direct vote.

There you have it. Problem fixed. If we just got rid of that mean ol' Electoral College everything would be fine.

I see that in the 1937 Soviet Union legislative election, the All-Union Communist Party (or 'Bolsheviks', the Mensheviks all off banging on rocks some time before) got 99.7% of the vote, so everyone seems to approve. Party leaders get chosen and the country is run for everyone's benefit. No problemo.

[fish]

Posted by: scenes | 22 April 2020 at 07:56 AM

Sometimes I think we should have a monthly Coffee With An Eastern Bloc Guy. The local liberals can hang out with someone who grew up in a Warsaw Pact nation and see what life was like when experiment hits reality.

A waste....they'd just write him off as a crypto-counterrevolutionary.....revisionist....or dare I say a Pythonesque "Splitter".

[George Rebane]

re Scott's 739am - I understood Scott's point that the Bolsheviks had no constitution when their October 1917 Revolution installed communism (followed by a 5-year civil war with the White Russians). It was then, and after Lenin's death in 1924, that they thought it would be neat to also have constitution.

[scenes]

re: GeorgeR@8:52AM

Not dissimilar to the US Constitution's ratification in 1788 after some degree of ad hocness.

[George Rebane]

scenes 908am - Perzackly. There's no shame or blame to take a first cut at something, see how it works, and then improve it. Fortunately our Constitution was then constructed with built-in mechanisms to do exactly that without having to fundamentally transform the country. That doesn't work for the pro-socialist cum communist Left.

[rl crabb]

In a perfect world, (or state, as the case may be) every county in California would have a Senate seat in the legislature, which would give us country bumpkins some voice in what gets done in Sucramento. It used to be more balanced until the courts knocked it down.
Still, I don't know how many more times a president can win elections by losing the popular vote before the whole system cracks. Look what that kind of logic did to oil prices.

[George Rebane]

rl 1035am - Agreed on the state senate make-up. But for the slow students among us (namely me), can please you draw some connecting threads between the logic of oil prices and losing the popular vote?

[Scott O]

crabb 10:35 - "Still, I don't know how many more times a president can win elections by losing the popular vote before the whole system cracks."
Ha!
You mean how many more times an R wins the presidency due to winning the electoral college.
You know good damn and well if Gore or Clinton had won the EC and lost the popular vote there wouldn't be one single little outcry from you or any other lefty.
It's only a "problem" because the "correct" side didn't win.
Conservatives understand why there is an EC and we accept that a person can win the POTUS and not the popular vote. We learned it in civics back in junior high.
I seem to recall Madam Pantsuit crowing about how she had the EC all locked up ahead of the election.
Looks like she just screwed up.
Stop whining about the long established rules just because you can't win the game. The 'system' isn't going to crack just because you don't like the person who won.
Oil prices are down because there is way more supply than demand.
Simple as that.

[scenes]

Scotto: "You know good damn and well if Gore or Clinton had won the EC and lost the popular vote there wouldn't be one single little outcry from you or any other lefty."

Hey, whatever it takes. Eventually you get one man, one vote, one time.

One thing I love about the electoral college arguments is just how much the Mob scrabbles to find some sort of nefarious doings involving white men, slavery, precious bodily fluids.

It absolutely never ever occurs to these people to simply check old census records and electoral college records and notice that the largest states used to be roughly proportional in both EC votes and population to the smaller. It's nothing like now where some small western states simply didn't load up on that vibrant diversity like California or New York.

[rl crabb]

I'm not whining, Scottie. I'm not a big fan of Democrats or Republicans, and I understand why the EC exists. Small states are like short men, they always have a chip on their shoulder and have to prove they're as relevant as the big boys. The way things are going, I doubt if either party will willingly concede in the next election without a fight.
Interesting times we live in. Sometimes, too interesting for comfort.

[Gregory]

"I'm not a big fan of Democrats or Republicans, and I understand why the EC exists. Small states are like short men, they always have a chip on their shoulder and have to prove they're as relevant as the big boys."

Speak for yourself, Crabby (but then, perhaps you are, with chip on the shoulder). The EC is a big part of why we've had a mostly stable Union. That and the bicameral legislature, the rabble in the House and the faux House of Lords at the Senate.

Small states are separate entities... getting rid of the EC would be a step towards anarchy. And it won't happen, as there are too many small ones to ever get them to agree to an Electoral Castration and allow the change.

[Bill Tozer]

RL,
“Sometimes, too interesting for comfort”

Yep, heard the meat wagon is stopping by your abode to haul your carcass off to the soap factory, you old horse, you. System analysis says losing money on you in four, three, two seconds.

If you like a true Democracy with mob rule, then you will love kissing the gig economy good-bye, told when you can get a haircut at the beauty parlor (playing ‘Mother May?’) and realizing minority rights is meant for you as a minority of one. Minority of the states, minority of the demographic,

Yes, current events sure mess with one’s comfort zone. Especially considering some animals are more equal than others. One Size does not fit all.

Look at the bright side. It could be worse. They could be sending you off to the lamp shade factory and the boss tonight will be dining on liver, fava beans, and a nice Chianti.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEQZiElLp-E

[Steven Frisch]

Posted by: rl crabb | 22 April 2020 at 10:35 AM

Yes, it makes total sense for Sierra County with 1200 residents to have the same vote in the legislature that LA County with 10 million residents to have :)

[Scott O]

SF 2:42 - "Yes, it makes total sense for Sierra County with 1200 residents to have the same vote in the legislature that LA County with 10 million residents to have"
Well, if you say so, Steve!
Or are you fabricating a quote from an imaginary person?
And you have to qualify that statement by letting us know which house of the legislature you mean.

[Scott O]

crabb 2:07 - "Small states are like short men, they always have a chip on their shoulder and have to prove they're as relevant as the big boys."
'Small' states?
Like Rhode Island?
Or did you mean largely rural states with low population density?
You know - the ones with all the food products, raw materials and minerals that the highly populated states love to use constantly and would starve in the dark without?

[Scott O]

And we're still waiting for the connection with the EC and low oil prices.
Anyone?
Bueller?

[rl crabb]

I don't know why Steve F. is so against counties having some say in their lives. It works that way in the U.S. Senate. You'd still have the guv'ner and the assembly to run roughshod over the minority.

[scenes]

Scotto: "You know - the ones with all the food products, raw materials and minerals that the highly populated states love to use constantly and would starve in the dark without?"

I believe so. Those are the highly populated states that primarily make money from insurance companies, banking, brokerage houses, internet advertising, media firms, and a tiny bit of manufacturing left over from when the banking and brokerage houses had them move to China.

Luckily, the flyover states get to have the banking and brokerage houses be their bosses via big multinational food product, raw material, and mineral companies.

It's a pretty tidy system. God knows where the rural states would be without it, I guess they'd have to trade food, raw materials, and industrial goods like John Deere tractors directly to the makers of computer chips and shoes. They'd lack all that value added that the urban states bring to the equation.

[rl crabb]

ScottyO 5:33PM - No need to get your panties in a wad, Scotty. I was only making a little joke comparing negative petro-dollars and negated Democrat votes in the Electrical College.

[Scott O]

crabb 8:55 - "No need to get your panties in a wad."
So - asking a question now constitutes 'getting my panties in a wad'?
Are you like that, Bob? You wait until you're upset about something before you ask a question?
That statement tells us a lot more about you than it insults me.
Now - maybe you can explain the 'joke'.
Oil prices are down because there is not much demand compared to the amount produced.
Are you saying there's no demand for Dem votes?
In CA, it's R votes for POTUS that are 'negated' or basically just thrown in the waste can.
That doesn't seem to bother you one bit.
But of course - you claim to be non-partisan.