Republican Club

By Brian Harmon

LW contributor

As of this writing, Vice President Joe Biden has 264 electoral votes, with four states still too close to call. He needs 270 to win.

The closeness of this presidential election has led to concerns about the possibility that the winner of the popular vote may not be the one who becomes president because of the Electoral College.

Although some people would prefer to have a pure democracy where the majority always gets their way, that is not the way this country is supposed to run. America is not a pure democracy, but rather a democratic republic.

Since the way the Electoral College works is spelled out in the constitution, it would be very difficult to change. There are actually four ways to amend the constitution: two have never been used and the third has only been used once.

The primary way of amending the constitution requires a twothirds vote in both houses of Congress, plus approval by three-fourths of the states.

The Electoral College gives each state one vote for each senator and one for each house member representing that state. That way, a large state has a much bigger say than a small state, but not so much that a candidate can be elected without having some support from small states also.

Another defense of the Electoral College is that each state has its own election laws. Hypothetically, a very large state, where a single party held effectively all the power, could swing the election. Being lax with its election laws and enforcement could make it easier to collect large majorities within certain parties.

A similar thing actually occurred in 1888. Democrat Grover Cleveland won a plurality of the popular vote because he won the southern states by large margins that were over 30 percent, but because of the Electoral College, the presidency went to Benjamin Harrison from Ohio.

Another “undemocratic” feature of the U.S. government is that although the House of Representatives is based on population, the Senate is composed of two Senators from each state, regardless of the population. This was the result of a compromise between the large states and the small states. Without this compromise, the Constitution would, undoubtedly, not have been approved. •••• In local races, the only clear-cut winner at this point is City Councilman and former Mayor Thomas Moore, who thanked the Republican Club for its support. Janet Nguyen appears at the moment to have a healthy lead in her Assembly race, but past experience shows that this is not a guarantee of victory. Orange County Supervisor Michelle Steel is, at this time, neck-and-neck with Congressman Harley Rouda.