My girlfriend and I recently went on a trip up the “Left” Coast to visit family and friends and I have to say there is still hope for our country. Once we left the Bay Area heading north, I was pleased to see many American Flags proudly on display. Patriotic Americans love their country and the Constitution that allows us to have our freedom.
This is in contrary to The Black Lives Matter Movement as this past 4th of July Black Lives Matter Utah wrote : “When we Black Americans see this flag we know the person flying it is not safe to be around. When we see this flag, we know the person flying it is a racist. When we see this flag, we know that the person flying it lives in a different America than we do. When we see this flag, we question your intelligence. We know to avoid you. It is a symbol of hatred.” The New York Times and MSNBC were quick to reiterate that The American Flag defines racism.
The further we drove from the metropolitan areas the more patriotic the scenery became. Driving north on Interstate 5 and seeing a 200’ wide flag coming up on the horizon to only see another flag of similar size 20 minutes later or coming down Hwy 101 in small towns like Hebo, OR to see the same thing. Houses decorated with Red, White and Blue Scallops and 10- 15 small American Flags along their frontage property.
Patriotism at its best – Not this BLM propaganda that tries to paint America as a racist country along with their Democrat leaders.
This gives me hope and it also reminded me of why the Electoral College works. See Electoral Map below where Red = Republican States, Blue = Democratic States and Purple is a mixture or a “Swing State”. What is misconceiving is that Northern California is predominantly Republican as is Eastern Oregon who recently had 7 counties announce they want to leave the state of Oregon and merge into Idaho. The population of the big cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento and Portland skew the proportion of the states. Unfortunately, these Blue States are practicing re-districting to ensure some districts stay blue by moving district lines as they see fit to ensure Democrat dominance.
The electoral college is, perhaps, one of the least understood features of our federal constitutional system of government.
The founding fathers created numerous checks and balances in order to prevent tyranny. This is why we separate federal and state government. It is why on each level, we separate the executive from the legislative and judicial branches. The system would be far more efficient if we removed these barriers and just had one streamlined organization, but the founders understood that such a system would surely lead to a dictatorship.
For the same reasons, they complicated the electoral process. We do not live in a pure democracy. We live in a democratic republic where our elected officials are our voices in the lawmaking process. The founding fathers were no friends of direct democracy.
The situation when the country formed also played a role in shaping the electoral college. The United States is a nation of independent nations. In fact, the word state in the European context actually means nation. What Americans call a state, Europeans call a province. But the meanings are different because in our system, the states created the federal government and assigned to it specific, limited powers.
So, when thirteen nations got together to form one united nation, they were rightly concerned about how they would elect their leader. The smaller nations (e.g., NJ and DE) were particularly concerned that their views would be ignored by larger, more populous nations (e.g., NY and VA).
The founders worked out a compromise that would ensure that the executive would have to listen to the interests of each state while still providing roughly proportional weight to the votes of the states. They created a system where each state voted for the president independently and then each state, as a state, would cast their votes for the president based on the size of their population. Technically they vote for a slate of electors who will then vote for the president on their behalf. In Article II, Section 1, we read:
“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. (US Constitution, Article II, Section 1)”
Currently, each state with the exception of two (Nebraska and Maine) cast all of its votes for one candidate rather than provide a percentage of votes to each candidate and this is a critical component of the system. Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia engage in this winner-take-all process.
Because the President has to accumulate a simple majority (270 of 538 electoral votes), it forces him to appeal more broadly to a wider section of the country. Even then, because of the concentration of the population in certain major metropolitan areas, it is theoretically possible for a president to only campaign in the eleven largest states, ignore the rest of the country, and still win the presidency.
Because the largest states are divided (e.g., CA and NY are reliably Democratic while TX and GA are reliably Republican), such a disaster has been averted. One could hardly imagine a greater recipe for strife and discord.
There are 3,141 counties in the United States. In 2016, Donald Trump won 2,626 counties and Hillary Clinton won only 487 counties because of this concentration of Democrats in major cities.
All this gives me hope as my friend and I drive through a small suburb of Vancouver, WA called Battle Ground where he pulls over his ’65 Mustang in a Safeway Parking lot so we can look at the large display of Pro Trump Flags, American Flags, hats and T- shirts.
There is nothing more American than that.