Despite the Veterans and Legal Affairs committee narrowly voting 7-6 ought not to pass, thanks to Democratic Sen. Erin Herbig and Rep. Janice Cooper breaking party ranks, LD 816 “An Act to Institute the National Popular Vote for President” will still go to the floor for a vote in the full Legislature. The full Legislature should reject this bad idea, too.
The Electoral College was created by some of the brightest minds in world history. Its existence is not only a pillar of our republic, but ensures that the less populated states in our country are able to influence the election of our chief executive. Maine currently has a population of approximately 1.3 million. For comparison, the Bronx has a population of 1.4 million, Palm Beach County, Florida has nearly 1.5 million, Middlesex County, Massachusetts has 1.6 million, and Los Angeles County has a staggering 10.1 million.
In Federalist Paper No. 10, written in 1787, Founding Father James Madison warned of the possibility that “an interested and overbearing majority” could “ unite a number of citizens … who…by some common impulse of passion, or interest, [are] adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent … interests of the community.” This remains as true today as it was in 1787. The history of the Electoral College was fundamental in the establishment of the federal system we enjoy today with power carefully divided between the federal and state governments, and legislatures and their constituents across the nation.
Awarding Maine’s electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote would ensure that no presidential candidate will ever need to spend one single cent advertising in or visiting Maine, and once elected, will not need to give one damn about the people of the state of Maine. Why bother, when Los Angeles County in California has over 10 million people?
Are the needs of the people of Los Angeles County anything close to what the needs of rural Maine are? Does Los Angeles need more affordable energy? Do they need better rural infrastructure? Do they need better broadband? Do they need funding for national parks? The answer to all of these questions is of course a resounding “no.”
Since the founding of our great nation, only on five occasions has the winner of a presidential election not won the popular vote. Coincidentally, four were Republicans and two of them have been in the last 20 years.
Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes in 2016. Once again we will compare Maine to Los Angeles; Clinton’s margin of victory in Los Angeles County alone was nearly 1.7 million votes — thus one tiny geographic and insular area of the nation would steer the whole country, Maine included, if we tied Maine to the national vote.
Until now, most states that have signed the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact are large states with a large number of electoral votes. For Maine to join this so-called compact is electoral suicide as our voices will no longer matter compared to the massive population centers. The Electoral College, is, at its core, a mechanism to ensure that the rights of smaller (to use the term, minority) states are guaranteed. To give up the right of Maine’s people to choose their own electors is tantamount to the persecution of any other minority.
That is important to note because all of the states that have signed into this “compact” are “blue” states, and this movement has only gained momentum in the last few years. It is impossible to see it as anything but partisanship after Donald Trump won the presidency after losing the popular vote. That this movement is occurring now, despite many other close elections in the past, is telling.
Our country is far more important than either party. We must not allow the rancor of the current day to forever tarnish our country’s legacy of fair elections.
Patrick D. Calder is a former chairman of the Portland Republican Party. He was a Republican candidate for Maine’s 1st Congressional District in 2012.