College shows the sovereignty of the states

The Electoral

The Sept. 5 editorial “Beware This Reform” stated that the Electoral College does usually “give presidential winners more legitimacy by magnifying their popular vote margins.” —

There is a fundamental, essential basis for the Electoral College: It creates a method for the states to vote for president. The Electoral College is not a method contrived to emulate the popular vote. The “united states” elect their federation’s president by selecting their delegates — using their own determined method of selection and their chosen proportionality — to cast the deciding vote for that office.

We do not have a popular vote that selects our president. We have an electoral vote that selects our president. Our states have their own sovereignty; they are not merely “counties” of a single government. And the responsibility is theirs for operating their election processes.

If you eliminate the Electoral College, you substantially change the nature of the relationship between the states and the federal government. At that point, we become only one country that has subdivisions that become subordinate to that government, and not a union of states choosing the federal government’s chief executive. This is not the way the Founding Fathers envisioned our land!

If you eliminate the Electoral College, you might as well eliminate the U.S. Senate, which prescribes equal representation for each of the states. (By the way, do you recall that each state’s senators were selected by the state legislatures until April 8, 1913, when the 17th Amendment was ratified?) It is that different perspective — in the national interest with equal representation — that makes it “the upper house,” different from a collection of representatives from every relatively equal number of citizens, the House. These senators carry primary responsibility for determining national policies — declaring war and establishing treaties, and representing the U.S. to other countries from a legislative perspective.

Yes, it is good to see a correlation between the electoral vote and the so-called “popular vote.” It’s comforting. But our president is chosen by the states, and that is why our elections need to be structured as they are, to represent the broad span of our country, not just the major population centers. It is a system that remains adequately flexible to function, in spite of substantial shifts in population, forcing presidential candidates to appeal to the people within each of the states, rather than allowing the most densely populated areas to dominate their priorities and their policies, particularly after the election is over.

To eliminate the Electoral College would not be reform; it would be a restructuring with substantial, unanticipated consequences. DOUGLAS D. MITCHELL

Mt. Lebanon