As President Trump tweeted last week, enacting such a system would mean "The cities would end up running the country. Smaller States & the entire Midwest would end up losing all power." Trump said he once liked "The idea of the Popular Vote," but now understands "The Electoral College is far better."
To be sure, Trump has skin in the game, having won the electoral college and "Lost" the so-called "Popular vote." But others have weighed in as well throughout history, including none other than then-Senator John F. Kennedy, who in 1956 called the idea "One of the most far-reaching, and I believe mistaken-schemes ever proposed to alter the American constitutional system."
Essentially, it was a proposal that would have abolished the electoral college in favor of a national popular vote.
According to the Congressional Record, Kennedy praised our current system as one in which "Third parties and splinter parties are effectively discouraged from playing more than a negligible role."
"Today we have an electoral vote system which gives both large States and small States certain advantages and disadvantages that offset each other," he said on the Senate floor.
Hardaway, a law professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law and the author of the upcoming book "Saving the Electoral College: Why the National Popular Vote Would Undermine Democracy," compared Macron's win in 2017's French elections to what Democrats would like to install in the U.S. To the professor, the French "Were given the choice between two candidates opposed by the vast majority of French voters." Similarly, had there been a national popular vote, Hardaway contends, Ross Perot very could have won the 1992 election, were it held when he was polling at 33 percent.
A national popular vote would take what small voice more rural citizens have away from them entirely, subjecting the rest of us to the will of people who do not share our values, our culture, or our way of life.
https://townhall.com/columnists/scottmorefield/2019/03/24/heres-why-john-f-kennedy-once-passionately-argued-to-keep-the-electoral-college-n2543601
To be sure, Trump has skin in the game, having won the electoral college and "Lost" the so-called "Popular vote." But others have weighed in as well throughout history, including none other than then-Senator John F. Kennedy, who in 1956 called the idea "One of the most far-reaching, and I believe mistaken-schemes ever proposed to alter the American constitutional system."
Essentially, it was a proposal that would have abolished the electoral college in favor of a national popular vote.
According to the Congressional Record, Kennedy praised our current system as one in which "Third parties and splinter parties are effectively discouraged from playing more than a negligible role."
"Today we have an electoral vote system which gives both large States and small States certain advantages and disadvantages that offset each other," he said on the Senate floor.
Hardaway, a law professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law and the author of the upcoming book "Saving the Electoral College: Why the National Popular Vote Would Undermine Democracy," compared Macron's win in 2017's French elections to what Democrats would like to install in the U.S. To the professor, the French "Were given the choice between two candidates opposed by the vast majority of French voters." Similarly, had there been a national popular vote, Hardaway contends, Ross Perot very could have won the 1992 election, were it held when he was polling at 33 percent.
A national popular vote would take what small voice more rural citizens have away from them entirely, subjecting the rest of us to the will of people who do not share our values, our culture, or our way of life.
https://townhall.com/columnists/scottmorefield/2019/03/24/heres-why-john-f-kennedy-once-passionately-argued-to-keep-the-electoral-college-n2543601
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