CNN: Bitter Dems Target Electoral College

On Monday, a reader submitted a comment on my post “Electoral College in Crosshairs of 39 States,” in which the reader disagreed with my assertion that the impetus behind the current push to abolish the Electoral College was President Bush’s controversial victory over Al Gore despite Gore’s winning the popular vote. I wrote that liberal bitterness over that incident was driving the current movement.

Last night, CNN Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider published an article on this issue, and although writing for a liberal-biased network, he acknowledged that Democrats are championing the Electoral College’s demise and recognized that while the movement did not begin with the 2000 election, that event created a sense of urgency that generated action. He also supported the conclusion that the current movement as described in my Monday post is in fact a legislative method to avoid amending the U.S. Constitution. Schneider wrote:

Those states would agree to appoint presidential electors who would vote for the winner of the national popular vote, no matter who wins the vote in each state. It would be a way to turn presidential elections into a nationwide popular vote without having to amend the Constitution. . . .

The problem is what happened in 2000. George W. Bush got elected by winning the Electoral College, even though Al Gore got more votes. That's happened four times in the country's history.(Watch Schneider talk about the Maryland law )

In our current system, the president is elected by the Electoral College and not directly by the people. The number of electoral votes each state receives depends on its population and representatives are chosen to vote on behalf of the people in the state. To win, a candidate has to win 270 electoral votes, which is a majority. If neither candidate gets that, Congress determines who wins. A few times, the American people's choice for president hasn't actually moved into the White House.

It's mostly Democrats who are behind this move. They're still angry over how Bush got elected, even though in 2004, a shift of about 60 thousand votes in Ohio would have elected John Kerry despite Bush's popular vote margin of over three million.

While there may be a need to engage in national discussion and debate over this issue of a national popular vote, that debate should occur BEFORE states act to circumvent the Constitution because “their man” did not win in 2000. The debate should focus on the merits of the Electoral College and if the support for a national popular vote is as broad as its proponents claim, then advocates should initiate the Constitutional amendment process.

The fact that they are quietly passing state legislative bills to avoid amending the Constitution should be a warning flag that the anti-Electoral College movement is pushing for something not explicitly approved of by a majority of Americans. If it were popular and much needed, a Constitutional amendment would pass smoothly. Advocates are avoiding that process because most Americans do not want to abandon a system established by the Founding Fathers at the request of smaller states to make sure their interests were not completely negated by the largest population centers.

The arguments that a national popular vote would improve campaigns because candidates would be forced to spend more time in “safe” cities and states, are specious at best. The idea of Democrat candidates campaigning hard in liberal Philadelphia to increase their margins of victory to offset losses in the popular vote elsewhere, is as ludicrous as the old “margin of victory” formula used by the BCS in college football. Teams like Florida State would post 77-0 victories over small patsies offering no competition because it was safe, and then BCS poll voters would be impressed by the margin of victory and boost a team’s rankings. A national popular vote would create a BCS system for electing U.S. presidents, a system in which 6-7 large metropolitan areas would determine a winner (just like the self-proclaimed 6 “major” college football conferences dictate participation in the BCS), and smaller states and cities would have little to no influence on national policies that directly affect them (just like the “mid-major” conferences have no opportunity to play in the BCS championship game).

Fortunately for America, the Founder’s wisdom foresaw the need to protect rural and suburban communities from being swallowed by the political domination of a few large cities concentrated in certain regions. The Electoral College assures that Philadelphians, who through no fault of their own know nothing about the needs of ranchers in the west or farmers in the Midwest, are not selecting our president simply because they outnumber the residents in less densely populated areas. A national popular vote would concentrate power too narrowly, and like the BCS, once power is obtained, it is stingily, if at all, shared.

Despite token BCS appearances by the University of Utah and Boise State (both resounding victories for the "mid-major"), the current BCS system still assures that no team outside of the 6 self-proclaimed "major" conferences will ever receive enough votes to play in the BCS "Championship" Game. It is not difficult to predict that America's 6-7 largest cities would operate in a similar fashion, choosing election participants and eventual winners with no regard to the needs or preferences of "mid-major" states and regions. We can do better than a BCS or American Idol popularity contest. The stakes are too high for such sophomoric and cavalier selection processes.

If you missed Monday’s post on this topic and the reader comments, I encourage you to take the time to examine the issue and make your voice heard by your local legislators. With 39 states debating bills similar to Maryland’s, chances are high that your legislators may be pondering an end run around the Constitution. We have a Constitutional amendment process for a reason. I urge readers to make your local representatives adhere to it.

Ehud Barak: Fighting Terror Like Fighting Malaria: Kill Mosquitoes and Drain the Swamp

In a talk given to the World Leaders Lecture Forum hosted by the University of Utah yesterday, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak addressed serious Middle Eastern issues but also provided some entertaining one-liners and sound bites.

As reported in the Deseret Morning News, in describing Israel’s current posture in its dealings with Palestinians and neighboring terror sponsoring states, Barak bluntly remarked that:

Israel has one hand stretched out in peace and the other hand very close to the trigger. . . . That’s the only way to survive in the Middle East, where there is no mercy for the weak.

He later added this quippy gem:

The Mideast is not the Midwest. We would love to have the Canadians as our neighbors, but you got them.

Given Israel’s neighbors, Barak’s quip is understandable, but perhaps Canada is not quite as peaceful and benign as he implies. Canada’s radical Islamic population is increasing at a rapid pace, and anti-Americanism, along with a strong anti-Semitism, are thriving, particularly in Montreal-Quebec. Courtesy of IDF Israel, this is what Mr. Barak wishes for on his borders in exchange for what Israel currently faces:


This should provide some perspective if Barak would love to have such people as depicted in these photos as his neighbors. He considers the U.S. lucky to have Canada as a neighbor, and despite Canada’s covetous anti-Americanism, I suppose we are fortunate in our geographical location in the modern world. Of course we also have a neighbor to our south that hates us more than Canada . . . but I digress.

Barak made some interesting remarks about U.S. strategy in the war on terror, including our efforts to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. According to Barak, the U.S. will need to compromise with China on human rights issues and Russia on self-determination for Chechnya to secure the cooperation of these nations in confronting Iran.

Human rights advocates will oppose such compromise, of course, and on the surface it is humbling to step back from previously stated demands made of China and Russia, but as I wrote about our strategy in Iraq in yesterday’s post, sometimes it is necessary to make unpleasant deals with unsavory characters or nations in order to achieve a more critical goal. We did so with Stalin in WWII, and it appears necessary now, as Russia and China are arming Iran and providing Ahmadinejad with the equipment to enrich uranium. Of course we are concerned with the human rights of the oppressed citizens of China, and we are similarly in favor of liberty and self-government for Chechnya, but neither of those issues currently imperils the existence of America and its allies. A nuclear Iran does. If we are intent on pursuing diplomatic pressure to convince Iran to change course, we must enlist Russia and China to intervene decisively in the interest of global security.

Mr. Barak seemed also to discount the importance of establishing a democracy in Iraq. According to Barak:

In the Middle East, the right to vote isn't the main issue. I'd prefer to look at the four freedoms outlined by President Franklin D. Roosevelt: expression, worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. Americans would do better to insist on universal, mandatory education for women rather than the right to vote.

This statement raises important questions. In my post yesterday addressing the question of whether the Iraq War is really a mess, I called attention to several tactics we failed to utilize that would have helped secure the services and cooperation of local tribal leaders and the disbanded Iraqi army in suppressing the insurgency. I quoted author Robert Kaplan’s summary of a conversation he had with an Iraqi sheik as described in Imperial Grunts: On the Ground with the American Military, and Mr. Barak's speech yesterday confirmed much of what that sheik described to Kaplan as the root problem faced by the America military: democracy, or democratic elections, was merely an intangible result of the American overthrow of Saddam’s regime. The Iraqi people wanted (and are still hoping for) more tangible offerings to improve their physical situation, and Barak echoes this sentiment by identifying the four Roosevelt freedoms as issues of more importance than elections in securing allies for America in the Middle East.

Barak assigns minimal significance to the right to vote in comparison to education for women. At first glance this appears contradictory, in that education would seem useless without the right to vote and participate in decision making. However, Mr. Barak makes an important point that others in alternative media have discussed: reform of Islam will never occur unless Muslim women are permitted to receive education and training, and gradually exercise more influence on Islamic culture. Women tend to soften extremism and provide wise counsel in public discourse. Barak is no chauvinist here. Israeli women serve mandatory tours of duty in the Israeli Defense Force and the contribution of women is critical to Israeli strength in the field and perhaps more importantly on the home front.

Few people in the world have the depth of experience with and knowledge of Arab culture that Barak has acquired over a lifetime of military, intelligence, and political service, and it should be significant to U.S. strategic planners that a former Prime Minister of the original Middle Eastern democracy would urge America to place higher priority on humanitarian and security concerns than on democracy as the key tools for winning the War on Terror. Based on his assessment, it appears we have killed many “mosquitoes” in the War on Terror, and hopefully the troop surge will contribute more to “draining the swamp” by securing Iraqi cities so Iraqis can receive Roosevelt’s four freedoms.