11/11/2000

Your recent front-page story: "Time for a change?" relates to the method our nation's founders devised for electing the President; the Electoral College. It is a wise method that was proposed to the State representatives when the Constitution was being developed to provide representatives of the small states with some guarantees that the larger states like New York would not dominate them.

Some of the representatives, like Hamilton of New York, wanted a very strong Federal government. Representatives of the smaller, weaker states opposed this. Their compromise is why we have two houses of Congress where the States' representation in the House of Representatives is based on their population but the Senate is accorded equal representation by the States regardless of population.

If the election of the President were left to a popular vote, the Federal government would eventually take the shape of the will of the most populous states. It would have the same effect as if we had no Senate. With just a little vision we can easily see, just as the founding fathers did, that the United States of America would quickly become the United States of New York or California, and the collapse of the Republic would soon follow (the U.S.S.R. is such an example).

Your article states that Senator Elect Hillary Clinton and Congressman McNulty support elimination of the Electoral College. Mrs. Clinton is quoted as saying: "We are a very different country than we were 200 years ago. I believe strongly that in a Democracy, we should respect the will of the people and to me, that means it's time to do away with the Electoral College and move to the popular election of our President." One of the implications in that statement is that the only reason for the development of the Electoral College was to get the States to accept the Constitution and that now it's okay to change the rules.

The Constitution was the result of compromises on the part of all the States in our Republic. Since that time, representatives of the States and the Federal government they formed have engaged in a process of fighting to get back the concessions they agreed to 200 years ago. We are "very different" as a result of their successes. Many of the changes we have witnessed have lead to an imbalance of power, a weakening of State and individual sovereignty and civil rights, and a bloated Federal government.

Mrs. Clinton's other implication is that we are a Democracy. We are not. We are a more perfect union known as a Republic, a distinction that has been blurred to the point that most people do not know the basic difference.
As Federal representatives of a very large state, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McNulty would elevate their station and increase their power at the expense of the people, the smaller states, and state sovereignty in general. It is easy to see why they support such a change and why they are taking advantage of the situation in Florida. They may hope to turn the results of this year's Presidential election around for their immediate gain but even if they fail in that effort they will have gained a great deal of support for the elimination of the Electoral College.

The people of Florida who have been whipped into frenzy are being used. Big government Democrats are taking advantage of their ignorance and misrepresenting the importance of the Electoral College. It is just one more in a seemingly endless barrage of efforts to grow the Federal Government and subvert the will of the people.

-DRC