Healey would “absolutely consider” altering the Electoral College

Printed from: https://newbostonpost.com/2016/11/12/healey-would-absolutely-consider-altering-the-electoral-college/

BOSTON — Attorney General Maura Healey hinted in a recent interview that it would be worth re-considering the Electoral College process, a protected bedrock of the U.S. Constitution.

“I know that’s something pundits have talked about, I think it bears looking at,” Healey told the Boston Herald on Thursday. “I think we should pay attention to the electoral process and do everything we can do to support the opportunity for Americans to have meaning and give voice through their vote in any election.”

Healey’s comments came days after her fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton, whom Healey endorsed, lost the presidency to Republican Donald Trump, who prevailed despite losing the popular vote 60,467,245 to 60,071,650, according to the final Associated Press tally.

Trump, however, bested Clinton 290 electoral votes to 228, managing in the process to flip five states that had previously gone to Democrats in 2012 in Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Michigan could also be added to the list once the final numbers are confirmed.

A brief civics review of the Electoral College process, as mapped out in the Constitution and other archives, indicates that framers opposed the notion of majority rule and instead arrived at the realization that pure democracies have historically faltered. 
 
 In November 1787 Virginia delegate James Madison noted that “a common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself.”“There is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual,” Madison added. “Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”

Ending the Electoral College process would require a Constitutional amendment.

Healey told the Herald she thinks it’s “something absolutely worth studying and considering.”