Letters to the Editor
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Wait, wait, wait. Stop. Rewind.
There are some extremely ignorant or deliberately misleading points in this article. First and foremost, the Constitution *does* call for the appointment of Electors and the electoral college even if that specific phrase is not used. Article 2, section 1: "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."
To imply that the Electoral College was, "Created to protect the slave states..." (as in the actual subtitle of the article!) after Reconstruction or as an afterthought and that there is no call for it in the Constitution is a serious breach of the author/audience trust and should by itself should be enough to disqualify the article from serious discussion.
Having said that, there is at least one other problem that is simply too egregious not to comment. First, according to the article, the reasons that the 'protecting small states' argument is, in the author's syntax, 'bullshit,' is because: 1) few presidents have come from the small states and 2) candidates regularly take certain stats for granted and/or don't visit certain states. I think Mr. Epps is either missing the point or more likely, intentionally glossing over and dismissing the most effective argument and the primary reason the Founders designed the Electoral College.
The 'protecting small states' argument that the author alludes to doesn't make the case that the Electoral College is a good system because it makes it easier for candidates from small states to be elected (which is clearly an absurd proposition, since among other reasons, 'small states,' by definition, don't have enough votes themselves to ensure that a candidate from their state is elected) or that it ensures candidates visit every state during the campaign. The 'protecting small states' argument's premise is that the Electoral College is a good system because it ensures that small states will be represented in the Presidential Election. Sure, I guess campaign visits are nice, at least for the ~1000 or fewer people who actually go to the event, but what's really important is the representation, not the campaign stops. The Electoral College ensures that candidates can't (or don't, anyway) promise to divert federal funds from 'small states' to large population centers. Further, because of the Electoral College, the President must answer to these 'small states,' and if, for example, a budget comes across his desk that disproportionally allocates federal funds to California at the expense of South Dakota, he can veto it or risk losing their support in the next election. In addition, the 'protecting small states' argument recognizes that, no matter how bad you think it is now, the consequences of getting rid of the Electoral College are worse. Abolition of the Electoral College would virtually force candidates to promise the majority of federal funding to a few metropolitan areas. No candidate could win with a broad campaign that reaches out to citizens that don't live in the top 5 cities. If that sounds pretty nice to you right now because you're a Democrat and those top 5 cities traditionally vote Democratic, realize that demographics are changing rapidly. The Southeast and Southwest are gaining population faster than the Northeast can lose it, which is pretty fast. Would you feel the same way if Houston, Charlotte, Phoenix, San Antonio, Dallas, and Atlanta were the major metropolises (which, judging by the way things are going, is not unlikely)? I doubt it.
The Electoral College is just another in the long line of superior institutions the Founding Fathers enshrined in the Constitution. I am a Democrat in Texas, one of the most disenfranchised blocs in the country, and should agree with the premise of the article; however, I do not believe that changing the Constitution for short term political gain is in either the country's or the Democratic Party's best interest.
The fact that this article is either willfully ignorant or deliberately misleading is unacceptable and I hope the author will realize his ethical (if not professional) obligation to correct his mistakes.