In his recent Policy Wonk column (“Minority rule is not democracy”), Orlando Delogu doubled down on his partisan advocacy for trashing the Electoral College in favor of a nationwide popular vote for the U.S. presidency.

His arguments are based on the idea that “one person one vote” is the highest principle in all elections, which simply is not true. Supreme Court decisions have established it as a Constitutional principle only in federal and state elections for House seats. Weighing votes to preserve a small measure of equality among the states is expressly prescribed in the U.S. Constitution, and has never been challenged by the Supreme Court. Given that we are a federalist republic of states, the abiding principle is that the states choose the president in state-by-state elections, a distinctive difference from a national popular vote on the subject.

Our founders deliberately chose a republic over a direct democracy after studying history and finding that direct democracies are neither resilient, stable, nor durable. Their wisdom is borne out by the fact that the U.S. is the world champion in all three of these categories – to which you can add a long list of additional championship achievements.

In asserting that the Electoral College “compromises the legitimacy of our democracy,” Delogu is actually compromising his credentials as a lawyer. His real purpose is to arouse public support for “rigging the system” in the belief (possibly false) that it will favor the election of Democrat presidents.

Robert D. King
Falmouth 


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