No need for an Electoral College in Ohio
Letter to the Editor,
In 1787 the United States established Electors under of the U.S. Constitution Article II, Sec. 1, Clause 2, as a process to elect the president and vice president only, not for any other elected office and certainly not to pass any laws. Each state was to appoint the number of electors based on the number of congressional delegations, and it is left up to the state as to the manner they are chosen. How these electors vote is based on the winner of the plurality of the statewide popular vote. The winner takes all statewide.
Later known as the Electoral College, it has had its challenges, which still persist to the present day. At the time it was established, there were no political parties. This soon complicated matters a few years later in 1796 when the Federalist and Democratic-Republican parties emerged. The 1800 presidential election resulted in a president and vice president nominated from the same party ending in an electoral vote tie and had to be resolved in the House of Representatives. The problems that ensued resulted in adding the 12th and later included in the 14th and 23rd Constitutional Amendments. Today there are those who reason that it’s an antiquated electoral process and should be repealed.
The vote on Issue 1 was put before all the registered voters of Ohio, the electorate, and not the population of the state or of the counties. Should it have passed, minority voters would overrule the majority if it did not reach the 60% + 1 threshold on all state ballot initiatives. Voters saw through this as a power grab by the Ohio state lawmakers.
If this was the law, prior to Issue 1 being on the ballot, it would have passed. Instead, it failed by a popular vote of 57% against 43% for it. This is what Democracy looks like with one person, one vote, when an unpopular proposal is put before the electorate; it fails.
In eight of the rural counties with the highest number of votes per rural county, they had less than a 50% turnout at the polls of registered voters, and five of those were under 38%. Compared to the 2020 election, there was a 70% or higher turnout in each of these counties. The failure of Issue 1 to pass was due to a majority who just didn’t show up to vote in these counties and others.
Differentiating between one voter to another based on where they live, be it rural or urban, would be antithetical to our democracy, and an Ohio Electoral College would be an inequity for all Ohioans, where majority rule is the law of the land.
Greg Stoner
Big Prairie
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