This morning at the polls, I was chatting with a candidate for local office who expressed confidence that the presidential election would go well — “unless,” he added, “they drag the thing out for three weeks while they find the votes they need.” By this time, vast numbers of Americans, and people all over the world, are acutely aware of the possibility of fraud and the very real danger that the actual choice of the voters will be overridden.
With the U.S. conspicuous among the world’s functioning republics for not having voter ID laws in many areas, the fact that election fraud is so easy makes us an international joke. Newsweek is laughing but doesn’t realize it has missed what the joke actually is.
Dan Perry is a made guy in the media establishment: he is “the former Cairo-based Middle East editor and London-based Europe/Africa editor of the Associated Press” as well as “the former Chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem.” So he must know what he’s talking about, right? The political and media elites wouldn’t lead us astray, would they?
As Americans were going to the polls Tuesday, Perry wrote in Newsweek: “Many Americans don't want to hear it, but the Electoral College is a uniquely damaging system that wildly distorts the will of the voter, yields crazy outcomes and suppresses participation—since most of us live in places where the outcome is preordained.”
You see? The problem is not the near-ubiquitous possibility of election fraud. The problem is the Electoral College. If we could just get rid of that, “our democracy” would be saved, and yes, Perry is among the hordes of leftists who insist on claiming that what we have actually is a democracy, and not what it actually is: a republic.
Pulling rank, he says: “I've been involved in covering perhaps 100 countries as a foreign correspondent, and can safely say that among democracies, none has a system that's anywhere near as berserk.” Perry’s largest analytical flaw is that he doesn’t seem to know the difference between a democracy and a representative republic; all the undemocratic aspects of the Electoral College that he deplores were put in place in order to establish and perpetuate a republic. But he shows no sign of understanding that.
In one appalling example of this lack of understanding, Perry complains that “the ‘popular vote’ doesn't mean anything” in America, while “in every other democracy it means a lot.” Imagine Newsweek’s shock and horror when he discovers that originally, there was no popular vote at all, and state legislatures chose presidential electors. But anyway, we have a popular vote now, and Perry claims that polls show that “around 60 percent in favor of a national popular vote for president. And yet, most people also think such a change cannot be made—a disgracefully undemocratic predicament.” Yeah, “disgracefully undemocratic” in a system that is not a democracy. Horrors.
Perry states that “the main goal” of the Electoral College was “balancing influence between populous and less-populous states” and claims that this is no longer necessary. Why not? Because, Newsweek says, most states will always vote in the same way, and so candidates only end up campaigning in the “battleground states” instead of all over the country.
Even worse, “safely ignored are voters in the three largest cities—New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago; candidates have no incentive to campaign in these urban centers because the states they're in are reliably Democratic. In a direct election, where every vote counts, American presidential candidates would make appearances there as French ones do in Paris, Lyon, and Marseille.”
Related: The Choice That Is Before Us
Trump did appear in New York not too long ago and got likened to Hitler for doing so. Anyway, Perry ignores the fact that the Electoral College exists precisely so that monolithic population centers such as New York and Los Angeles, which may enjoy a lot of ethnic “diversity” but are politically monochromatic, can’t decide each presidential election on their own with no input from the rest of the country. The Electoral College gives a voice to huge sections of the nation that would otherwise be voiceless. That’s what Newsweek calls “undemocratic.”
Even worse, Perry says the current system “seems too unfair, and will cause too much frustration in Blue America.” Oh, now we come to the real point: Newsweek hates the Electoral College because the Democrats have power in urban centers filled with illegal migrants and welfare recipients but scant support outside of those centers. They need the Electoral College gone so that they can win every future election.
Otherwise, Perry warns: “Expect secession talk from the overwhelmingly Democratic Pacific and Northeast regions.” Otherwise, expect bloodshed: “How long will they tolerate Republican obstruction of gun control or health care reform, or maybe a national abortion ban? Since secession requires a nearly impossible constitutional amendment, it may get violent.”
So that’s Newsweek’s argument: hand the country to the Democrats and let them implement their full agenda or else. Who does Newsweek think they are? Will Ferrell?
