Editor’s note: This commentary is by Don Keelan, a certified public accountant and resident of Arlington. The piece first appeared in the Bennington Banner.
[C]alifornia’s Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer have much in common with Vermont’s Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders. The four are long-serving members of the U.S. Senate. All are members of the Democratic Party. Also, in the U.S Senate, they each have one vote.
Notwithstanding the obvious similarities, there is one huge difference. The California senators represent 38.8 million citizens, while their Vermont Senate colleagues represent only 626,000 citizens. To make this point another way, the population represented per Senate seat is about 313,000 for either Leahy or Sanders and 19.4 million for either Boxer or Feinstein. Vermont’s population, small as it is, has a great advantage in the U.S. Senate.
I make the above point in order to put into perspective the current debate that is taking place to do away with the Electoral College. Recently, there has been a great deal of press on the subject in light of the presidential election. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a margin of approximately 2 million, but did not obtain the necessary 270-plus electoral votes needed to secure the presidency. As a result, and for the fourth time in U.S. history, the selection of the president will be undertaken by the Electoral College on Dec. 19, throughout the country’s 50 state capitals.
And while the selection of the president by the Electoral College has taken place in 1876 and 1888, what is very unsettling to many is that it had occurred in 2000, and once again, 16 years later. For many, it is time to have a constitutional amendment that would do away with the Electoral College and only have the president elected by popular vote. Please, not so fast.
The framers of the Constitution had it right when they addressed the issue of small states versus big states as far as equal representation.
Let’s reflect for a moment and recall the Pledge of Allegiance. The 16th word within the pledge is republic. What has transpired over the past few decades is that we have lost sight of the fact that we are a republic of 50 states. And for mutual benefit, have come together and formed a union.
One aspect of independence is to not allow the more populace states to dominate – the very reason our two elected U.S. senators have equal power when dealing with Senate business as do the senators from California. The point becomes even more poignant when you add Texas and Florida’s population in with California – 85.5 million citizens – 26 percent of the country’s population, represented by six senators. Could it be time to do away with the Senate, it does not fairly represent the country’s population?
The framers of the Constitution had it right when they addressed the issue of small states versus big states as far as equal representation. However, over the years, with Washington having a more dominate role as the “keeper of the purse,” we have subrogated our sense of a republic.
There is currently a resolution before Congress, introduced by California’s Sen. Boxer, to amend the Constitution and do away with the Electoral College. You can’t blame her for doing so, and it wouldn’t be the first time. Recently, there has been the National Popular Vote movement with a similar agenda. In 1969, the issue to do away with the Electoral College came very close to fruition. But the legislation to change the Constitution never made it to the 50 statehouses.
If I were a resident of Texas, California or Florida and witnessed the U.S. Senate defeat legislation that would have benefitted my state by votes of Vermont’s two senators, I would not be pleased. However, the framers of the Constitution in creating the U.S. Senate and the Electoral College did so not to please those citizens from the larger states, instead to protect those from the much smaller ones.
Could it be that the real issue to be addressed is why did approximately 45 percent of eligible voters not vote?
