Electoral college is the only thing
that keeps smaller states relevant to national, two-party politics. While it's
far from a perfect system, no one outside of Colorado would care what
the 5.1 Million Coloradans think about anything if it weren't for the fact
that whoever wins at least 51% of our votes gets the power of all of nine of our Electoral College votes.
If “popular vote”
advocates had their way, the only places that would matter to
politicians on a national scale would be the population centers –
Southern California and the East Coast
Sorry Rust-Belt factory workers. Sorry
ranchers. Sorry hunters, fishers, hikers, motorcyclists. Sorry
fly-over states. Unless you live in a large population center where
politicos deem worthy of spending their time, your concerns no longer
matter and will dictated by those who probably have never even seen
your state.
No national politician would waste
their time traveling through Colorado, Ohio, or Iowa unless they knew
that they needed to get enough of their supporters to turn out to tip
the whole state in their favor. Otherwise they would spend all of
their time pandering to the coasts and never even think about the
states that have a total population lower than the particular
metropolis they're fundraising in that day.
Of course, this results in some
pandering the other way, too. The Farm Bill wouldn't be nearly as
much of a mess if Iowa weren't a swing state. No one would care
about National Forest logging rules if Colorado weren't a swing
state. This can go either way depending on how and if these thing
affect? your daily life, but it does bring otherwise dull issues to
the national spotlight from time to time.
I think the Framers knew what they
were doing when they decided on the Electoral College system of
presidential politics – giving “smaller” states a little more
leverage against their “big” neighbors in a two-party system. This does screw up any chances of a viable third party, but that's an issues for another day...
Sorry for the rant.
Good FAQ on the Electoral College here.
1 comment:
I think you make some really good points here about the importance of "small" state representation. But I still feel like the most relevant way to represent "small" states is in the legislative branch-- specifically, in the structure of the Senate. I feel like electoral college in the executive branch does more harm than good-- and if it hands us a president slightly more sympathetic to Colorado's needs, said president is already preoccupied with a lot of other constituencies that he represents. In the Senate, where we have two senators just like California, there are people who spend all day pushing Colorado's interests. I think that's where small state representation actually matters, not the presidency.
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