A Republic, If You Can Keep It: The Brilliance of the Electoral College
 
A Republic, If You Can Keep It: The Brilliance of the Electoral College
Written By James M. Odom   |   11.22.24
Reading Time: 3 minutes

After the signing of the Constitution in September 1787, Elizabeth Willing Powel asked Benjamin Franklin,

“Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”

Franklin responded,

“A republic, if you can keep it.”

The Founders of our nation who were present at that convention, Franklin among them, are viewed by historians as, providentially, one of the most uncommonly brilliant groups of men ever assembled for such a purpose—unlike the world has seen before or since.

To help “keep” this republican form of government, those political geniuses put into place many Constitutional checks and balances to keep future majorities from remaking the republic into a government of men (i.e., them).

The Electoral College is the founders’ gift to us – the cornerstone of this union of sovereign states.

The Electoral College is really a genius mathematical formula (think the theory of relativity and nuclear power) to count the votes of individuals and states as unique, sovereign governments that still retain their own individual characters. Every state (by its number of senators) gets two electors automatically, while the remainder of electors within each state (by its number of representatives in the House) are proportional to popular votes.

This system ensures that every state’s say in the federal government will always be counted separately and proportional to its population.

The Electoral College is one of the main guarantees of a republican form of government.

Article IV, Section IV of the Constitution states the following:

“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.”

So, if one considers the text of the Constitution authoritative, it would be unconstitutional to eliminate the Electoral College (as it would be to cap representatives at 435, make D.C. a state, or not allow the Vice President to count the electoral votes, but we won’t go there now).

In order for state divisions to exist (i.e., we are the United “States,” not one government, but not nations independent of one another either), the Electoral College MUST exist!

Removing the Electoral College is a political strategy based on population concentration. The concentration of population becomes a concentration of power.

Large populations can be more easily manipulated toward political fads (marijuana, abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism) and tyranny of the majority (think Germany, where to solve the majority’s problems, the government was democratically willing to deny the rights – to put it lightly – of a large minority of its population. Consider also American slavery or abortion).

State electors are ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY to preserve the rights of states against a “progressive” tyranny by population concentration. If the Electoral College were to be eliminated, the power of states would effectively be neutralized and completely subject to federal power.

Take the plausible example of an 81 square-mile area with 75,000,001 people (currently about enough to win a presidential election by itself, about the population of Guangzhou, China). With the Electoral College and, say, 100 representatives of the other 75 million voters evenly distributed throughout the other 49 states, those packed into the city of Guangzhou would lose 147-52.

Remove the electors, and Guangzhou wins 75,000,001 to 75,000,000, ruling over the rest of the country and able to enslave, kill, abort, or imprison them. But these things aren’t likely to happen, are they? Governments (of sinful man) don’t do such things, right? We are more civilized now. We aren’t barbarians.

Does this sound particularly familiar to Illinoisans?

This is what the socialists have done with individual states over time. Without an Electoral College system, they took California, which had been Reagan country and very anti-Marxist. They’ve taken Illinois. (Imagine the difference if Illinois Senators were 1 per county, a rough equivalent to the federal electoral system.) They’ve taken New York. On and on it goes. They’re working on Texas. Florida seems to have gotten a breather for now.

Until the 2024 election (and possibly 2020, but we’ll leave that one alone for now), the popular vote has gone predominantly to Marxist progressives for many years.

Without the Electoral College, Guangzhou would have been in charge for a long time by now.

Don’t let them fool you into taking our whole nation at once!


James M. Odom
James Odom is a Senior Policy Analyst for the Illinois Family Institute and Illinois Family Action. God used His Church and Godly legal mentors and pastors to forcefully direct James passion and vocation toward in depth study and understanding of the relationship between civil government and God’s Church from the very beginning of law school in 1992.  James graduated from Indiana University School of Law with a J.D. In 1995, and has been admitted to practice law in several jurisdictions over the following 25 years, including 5 years in the legal department at Focus on the Family. He and his...
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