NewburyportNews.

com,
Newburyport, MA
July 22, 2010

Don't shut down the electoral system

Remember the iconic bumper sticker, "Don't blame me, I'm from
Massachusetts"?

It never would have existed if the 1972 presidential election had been
conducted in the way now envisioned by House Speaker Robert DeLeo,
Senate President Therese Murray and a majority of the Legislature.

The saying, and the bumper sticker, became popular after the Watergate
scandal that drove President Richard Nixon from office in 1974.
Massachusetts voters took great pride at the time that theirs was the only
state in the country that did not give its electoral votes to the disgraced
president.

But under the terms of a bill approved 28-10 by the state Senate last week,
Massachusetts would not have been able to cast its electoral votes for Sen.
George McGovern, even though that is what the voters of the state wanted.

The House had passed a version of the bill in June. Gov. Deval Patrick has not
declared whether he will sign it.

The move to force states to cast their electoral votes for the candidate who
wins the national popular vote has gained steam since the 2000 election,
when President George W. Bush defeated Vice President Al Gore, even
though Gore won a slim majority of the popular vote.

This, declare various fevered activist groups, was both unfair and
undemocratic. Why shouldn't the person who got the most votes win the
election?

Such a view of the American electoral system displays either an appalling

ignorance of the wisdom of our Founding Fathers or a willful desire to
undermine one of the key elements of American greatness, or both. It is a
spectacularly awful idea, and our legislative leaders ought to know better.

Even worse, those leaders aren't even willing to submit the question to
voters for a nonbinding referendum. They killed a Republican effort to put
the matter on the ballot.

The founders knew that a raw majority is not necessarily a representative

majority. They knew it would be better for the country if candidates for
president had to seek the approval of those in lightly populated states as
well as those in large population centers.

If all it takes to become president is to win the popular vote, candidates will
have no incentive to campaign in the heartland or any state with a small
population. New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont won't even be
afterthoughts. Elections will be controlled by the coastal population centers,
with perhaps a bit of influence from the upper Midwest. As Sen. Richard Tisei,
R-Wakefield, put it during debate on the matter, it will disenfranchise smaller
states.

Is that the America we want?

The election of the president is, by the design of the founders, a contest to
win states, not merely to win votes. That legislators in this state, one of the
original adopters of the Constitution, would subvert that design in the name
of a fashionable populism is horrifying.

Given a choice, would you trust John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander
Hamilton and James Madison to safeguard the pillars of American
democracy, or Robert DeLeo and Therese Murray?

The choice ought to be obvious. This is a very bad idea, and voters who care
about their country ought to tell their legislators so. Gov. Patrick should veto
the proposal.