Electoral College designed to protect

To The Eagle:

According to a recent letter, we bleeding heart liberals lack a sense of history, responsibility and appreciation for the wonders of the Electoral College. Let’s dispense with those delusions forthwith.

The Electoral College was a poisoned compromise forged during the constitutional convention of 1787 by slave owner and founding father James Madison to establish slavery as an essential element of the new republic. Since 40 percent of the southern state’s population at that time were slaves, it was agreed by the delegates that a slave could be counted as 1/3 of a person.

This appalling solution addressed the population disparity between the sparsely populated rural South and the bustling population centers of New England in order to equalize apportionment in the House of Representatives. It also planted the seed that blossomed into the American Civil War 74 years later.

The founders, members of the southern planter’s aristocracy and eastern shipping and banking establishments, were not political dilettantes, and crafted the presidential electoral process to help them achieve and maintain permanent legislative influence. They knew that it was not the people who cast their ballots that counted. Rather, it was the people who counted the ballots that did.

Our hallowed founding fathers had no intentions of letting the proletarian workers of the nation decide who would rule them. The Electoral College was also designed to eviscerate democratic populism by filtering the popular vote through a limited quorum of Electoral College delegates who could be more effectively managed and influenced.

A determined individual in concert with other committed individuals isn’t just one of the things that can help eliminate the travesty of the Electoral College, it is the only thing that will.

To feel the need to redress such injustice, and act upon that feeling, is the highest form of responsibility.

J.B. Bouchard

Puget Island