Featured Post

How To Deal With Gaza After Hamas

Monday, December 19, 2016

Alexander Hamilton would have thought it treason for the Electoral College to deprive Trump of the Presidency



When it comes to in-depth Constitutional interpretation and analysis, you might be better informed if you had a conversation with your Cocker Spaniel than with a typical Hollywood celebrity.

A few of them, and some George Soros-funded organizations are involved in a campaign to undermine the results of the American presidential election by trying to persuade Republicans selected to the Electoral College to vote against Donald Trump.

That is a betrayal of the purpose for which the Electoral College was created.

Contrary to the understanding of some celebrities, the Electoral College was not a creation of Alexander Hamilton, a Broadway musical about him being popular right now notwithstanding. It is Hamilton who is the presumed author of Federalist Paper Number 68 which explains and advocates for the purpose of the Electoral College.

Hamilton (we presume) explained it is a body, and by that meaning a process preformed by Electors chosen on the basis of the vote in each state, who would choose the President. Its purpose was not to prevent Donald Trump or someone like him from ascending to the presidency. It was to prevent a corrupt person or people who had undue influence in one or two states from ascending to the highest political office in America.

While Hamilton considered that it might be possible to gain control through corruption in one or two states, it would not be possible to do so in all the United States of America. Therefore the Electoral College was created as a safeguard against just a couple of populous states being able to control the fate of the nation on their own. The Electoral College represents a compromise between the popular vote and the right of all the states in America to be able to effect the outcome of a national election.

As we're seeing from November's election, almost all of Hillary Clinton's advantage in the popular vote was localized in a a fraction of populous states, particularly California. But it was always the Founding fathers' intention that such an eventuality, of itself, would not be how a president is selected.

Here is the relevant section from Federalist Paper Number 68 explaining the rationale behind the Electoral College:
Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one querter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union? But the convention have guarded against all danger of this sort, with the most provident and judicious attention. They have not made the appointment of the President to depend on any preexisting bodies of men, who might be tampered with beforehand to prostitute their votes; but they have referred it in the first instance to an immediate act of the people of America, to be exerted in the choice of persons for the temporary and sole purpose of making the appointment. And they have excluded from eligibility to this trust, all those who from situation might be suspected of too great devotion to the President in office. No senator, representative, or other person holding a place of trust or profit under the United States, can be of the numbers of the electors. Thus without corrupting the body of the people, the immediate agents in the election will at least enter upon the task free from any sinister bias. Their transient existence, and their detached situation, already taken notice of, afford a satisfactory prospect of their continuing so, to the conclusion of it. The business of corruption, when it is to embrace so considerable a number of men, requires time as well as means. Nor would it be found easy suddenly to embark them, dispersed as they would be over thirteen States, in any combinations founded upon motives, which though they could not properly be denominated corrupt, might yet be of a nature to mislead them from their duty.
Therefore were the Electors to defy the will of the voters in their states and choose, not the person for whom they were delegated the honor of selecting, but instead substituting someone of their own choice (or that of some influential Hollywood actors or a notorious billionaire currency manipulator), it would be treason.

Hollywood is saying the members of the Electoral College should follow their conscience. But that's not what they mean. They are telling them to betray their oaths, the Constitution, and the people of the United States to get an election result that they couldn't get from the American people in the general election.

No comments: