Abolish the Electoral College and my own state’s relevance.
Senators from small states that no one would otherwise care about calling for eliminating the Electoral College are disempowering the people who elected them and putting their party ahead of their states.
Vermont has a population of 647,000. Hawaii has a population of 1.4 million. Hawaii has two House members. Vermont has one.
But here are Sen. Brian Schatz from Hawaii and Sen. Peter Welch from Vermont have proposed a constitutional amendment (that is going nowhere) pushing for the abolition of the Electoral College.
Because they really want to make their states even more irrelevant than they are now.
But here’s a little thought experiment. Schatz and Welch want only the popular vote to elect presidents, but they’d like states, even small ones, to still retain two senators. No matter how small they are. They want state-based representation where it favors them and a purely national system where it doesn’t.
“In an election, the person who gets the most votes should win. It’s that simple,” Schatz said. “No one’s vote should count for more based on where they live. The Electoral College is outdated and it’s undemocratic. It’s time to end it.”
Except that the votes of the 647,000 Hawaiians already count for as much as the 38 million Californians when it comes to Senate representation. Shouldn’t Schatz also be clamoring for proportional Senate representation so that “no one’s vote should count for more based on where they live”?
(Some liberals have proposed this. None of them have been senators from small states.)
Such a proposition would take one senate seat from both Hawaii and Vermont. Somehow I don’t think Schatz and Welch are going to line up to give up their own seats. Because they put party over state, but they also put state over party.
Article posted with permission from Daniel Greenfield
