Friday, March 15, 2019

In his blog titled, The Electoral College is in Jeopardy on Texas Scorecard, conservative blogger Matt Stringer argues that the Electoral College is being attacked but should be protected. His audience is fairly clear since it is a conservative blog source. However what makes it clearer is the inflammatory and unnecessary language to prove his point. He calls attacks against the Electoral College as a devious plot and that the framers would agree. To the first point, it is pretty obvious that opinions on other solutions aren’t ‘devious plots,’ rather they are criticisms. It isn’t a bad thing to step back and ask if what we’re doing is working. 
Secondly, the question shouldn’t be whether they would agree or not. The question should be are they wrong or right. The fact of the matter is that the framers got some things absolutely wrong. We saw that when Jefferson and Adams ran against each other a second time, they had to immediately fix the ballot system using the 12thamendment. We had to fix the entire way we look at a class of people with the 14th  and 15thamendments to allow them to be a part of the political process. Then the 17thamendments also restated the fact that we need to look hard at how we elect certain individuals, specifically the direct election of senators. To say that reevaluating our system of government is un-American is completely false. What makes America great is that we have systems that allow for change and can admit when we did wrong. 
The substance of course is not important here, he makes the argument that the Electoral College is a check on federal power and protects large rural areas like a lot of Texas, which makes sense. However, should the small rural areas really have more political power if more people are living in large cities? Should it be minority rule, a president who lost the popular vote wins? 

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