Maryland?s House of Delegates made history earlier this week by voting to cast all of its electoral votes for the presidential candidate winning the national popular vote. The bill, passed recently by the Senate, makes Maryland the first state of a group supporting structural changes to the way we elect the president.
Gov. Martin O?Malley has said he intends to sign it into law. He shouldn?t. It is a bad idea for a lot of reasons. The most obvious being that it has the potential to disenfranchise the majority of Maryland voters, Democrats, if a Republican wins the national vote in the next election. Thankfully, if signed into law it would not take effect until states constituting a majority of the electoral college votes, 270, pass similar legislation.
Besides, if preventing another election like the one in 2000, when Democrat Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote to Republican George W. Bush, is the main goal of this legislation, it likely will never be able to flex its muscles. Such a scenario has only happened three other times in the history of the nation.
Many people have championed eliminating the Electoral College. And members of Congress have proposed more constitutional amendments to alter it than on any other topic. But that does not mean we should change the system.
We are a republic, made up of 50 individual states with peculiar interests, geography, population and beliefs, not a direct democracy. The Founders enshrined this set up in the Constitution by apportioning each state two Senators and at least one Representative. This structure may not be “fair” to big population states, but it prevents a tyranny of the majority.
The Electoral College system flows from the idea of state dominion. It gives the people of each state a say in who should be elected. Eliminating it might prevent another 2000 election ? which in the short term might have been more to the liking of people in this bluest of blue states ? but it also means torching Maryland?s identity and paves the way to eliminating state borders. It?s not a long road from eliminating the Electoral College to calling for an end to state elections for federal office in favor of a nationwide vote for our 435 representatives and 100 senators.
In that scenario Maryland would lose power, just as it does if we cast our electoral votes to the national winds. Candidates from the most populous states would hold an obvious advantage over those from smaller places, making it a possibility no one from Maryland might win enough votes to make it to Congress.
Would it be fair if half of Congress hailed from California? No. Neither is giving up our say in the presidential vote, even if we are on the losing end of an election. O?Malley must veto the bill.
