Electoral College

[WMSteed@aol.com]

In light of today's voting by state electors and recent postings to this list 
to do away with the Electoral College, I thought the following letter to the 
editor of Sunday's Lewiston Morning Tribune was particularly enlightening on 
the opposite viewpoint:

"Now that the election mess is winding down I see the liberals are once again 
beating the drum to do away with the Electoral College and go to direct 
elections. A look at the election map shows us that America is a deeply 
divided country.  In the South and inland West, where most of the resources 
of the whole country's needs are produced, [they] want to keep our republic, 
retain our freedoms and reduce the control of the federal government in out 
lives.  Then there are people in the big population centers in the Northeast 
and upper Midwest, where a majority seem willing to give up much of their 
freedom and believe the government's job is to make their life easier with 
other people's money.

"If a direct voting system was ever established, candidates would spend their 
time campaigning in these population centers and the one who promised to 
spend the most out of the public purse on them would probably win.  It 
wouldn't take long under this system for the country to come apart.  Far from 
being outdated as liberals claim, preserving the system is more important now 
than when our forefathers established it, with the country so divided.  

"Of course the whole idea is moot.  It would take a constitutional amendment 
to change the system and I can assure everybody the rural states that 
outnumber the urban ones significantly are never going to give up any of 
their power and it would take a two-thirds majority of the states to change.  
Let us put this stupid idea to rest once and for all."

Don Stamps
Lewiston