Wednesday, November 15, 2000

By AMY RILEY
One Citizen's Opinion

I hesitate to weigh in on the week long fiasco of our 2000 Presidential election, but I'm going to anyway. I am just as shocked, dismayed, and befuddled about what all of this means as anyone else. I, too, have probably read and viewed more spin and political poppycock in the last week than I did in the last eight years, and I honestly didn't think that was possible.

Before, we lamented that this country was tripping down "that slippery slope." Now is there any doubt that we are barreling at luge speed in to a future that is anyone's guess? We have heard it all now, from Democrats accusing Republicans of using deadlines and partisan election officials to throw a rush on the recount process, to Republicans accusing Democrats of rampant voter fraud and wanting to count and recount until the resulting count favors an Al Gore win.

Regardless of who you voted for, or how you feel about the current disheveled electoral process, there are a few things that will ring true no matter what.

For one thing, if Bush wins the electoral vote and not the popular vote, and probably no matter the outcome, there will be a hue and cry to amend the Constitution to abolish the Electoral College. First Lady turned senator, Hillary Clinton, has already promised to cosponsor a resurrected version of a 1997 bipartisan bill to do away with the Electoral College in favor of a direct, popular vote. I haven't even fully ingested what this means for our country, but my instincts are to not trust anything with Hillary's approval stamp on it.

What can we expect if we eliminate the Electoral College?

More of the last week's circus for starters. A direct popular vote will mean putting all of our eggs in one basket. Gone will be the checks and balances of distributed power. There will a ruthless onslaught of counts and recounts forever because the whole ball of wax will be decided by a singular process.

Why did we have the Electoral College in the first place? Many assume that it was born of fear that an uninformed, largely agrarian, isolated populace would elect a president when they had no knowledge of government, the issues, or the candidates in question. In that case, it is easy to fall for the argument that in our modern age of rapid communication and public education, that today's citizens are capable and rightfully entitled to select their president by direct popular vote, though the "confusion" of some in Palm Beach County, Florida might suggest otherwise.

But consider that the Electoral College was really established as a check and balance on the federal government to protect states' rights. Since prior to Roosevelt and the Depression era, the primary role of the president was to guide international policy and interstate commerce as a representative of all of the states. The presidency was essentially an umbrella to keep the states huddled together as a united front against the threat of external assault.

All states were given electoral votes equal to their two Senate seats plus one for each House of Representative seat. In this way, smaller states had a fighting chance in contributing to policy and would not be overruled by big states. The threatened elimination of this check and balance on power will create essentially a mob rule democracy and further centralize power at the federal level.

Given the incremental growth since the 1930s of the belief system that government's role is to provide for the people, as opposed to the previous notion that the federal government's role was to get out of the states' and the peoples' way to the greatest extent possible and allow them to provide for themselves, we have experienced a dramatic role reversal between the federal and state governments.

The federal government is no longer an umbrella. Now it is more like a choke chain. As long as states don't pull and resist too much, the chain hangs loosely. But get out of line, and make a few demands about states' rights, and feel the chain squeeze the state in to federal submission.

The chain of money, entitlements, services, and other such "gifts" from the treasury is all about buying power. Witness the EPA holding hostage our tax dollars for road construction until we choke back in line with, as yet, untested in the courts, murky air quality guidelines.

Under mob rule, big states like California, New York, Texas, and Florida will be on the receiving end of much pandering and placating by presidential hopefuls. The expressed will of the people will be defined along a liberal, urban mindset. Rural, small-town America, which tends to be more conservative minded, will be totally disenfranchised from the process. States will cede over even more authority to the federal government which has taken grave liberties with states' rights already.

And what else will we glean from this 2000 election? A new faithlessness, new doubt, new fear and mistrust? The sense that even something as hallowed as our process of electing a president is looking a lot like hype night on World Wide Wrestling? Oh, to be back tripping down that slippery slope.

[Your comments are welcome: ARileyFreePress@aol.com.]

Back to Opinion Home Page | Back to the top of the page