Rhode Islandís political leaders should have applied a little more thought to their support of the National Popular Vote movement, an attempt to end-run the U.S. Constitution without going through the...
Rhode Islandís political leaders should have applied a little more thought to their support of the National Popular Vote movement, an attempt to end-run the U.S. Constitution without going through the amendment process that was set up to protect the public.
The House and Senate supported, and Governor Chafee pledged to sign, the measure to commit Rhode Islandís four electoral votes to whoever wins the popular vote in a presidential election. This is a way to get around the poorly understood Electoral College system put in place by the Founders.
The Founders were not as foolish as modern politicians seem to think. They established the Electoral College, in part, to shield the system from corruption and mob rule, and prevent the interests of smaller states such as Rhode Island from being utterly ignored by bigger ones. That todayís politicians do not seem to grasp this basic concept is a measure of how poorly they understand, or how little they support, the pragmatic limits on power put in place by the Founders.
Under the Constitution, the presidential election is a collection of individual state elections. Rolling up the vote in the big cities of one state, through corruption or other means, does not impact the vote total in another state. Under a purely popular-vote system, however, cheating or special-interest dominance in one state could swing the total.
In addition, the Constitution gives smaller and rural states greater clout than their mere population numbers. That was part of a hard-fought compromise in the 1787 constitutional convention, the idea being that politicians would have to consider a broad range of interests in setting policy. Thus, Rhode Island enjoys four electoral votes ó giving it about twice the clout it would have in a national popular vote.
It seems foolish for small states, in particular, to give up those hard-won rights, while tampering with a system that has worked exceptionally well for more than 200 years.