Re: Nov. 15 news story.
I am a Democrat and I support Micheal Baca in his attempt to block Donald Trump from taking office and to replace him with a Republican that the House of Representatives can come to a compromise on. Both parties blew this election because they didn’t take their populist factions seriously and now we are stuck with an incompetent, dangerous president-elect who has started a political war among Republicans and is horrifying to the majority who voted for Hillary Clinton.
Convincing electors to abandon Trump and forcing the election into the House could actually help heal the divisiveness between the parties. Republicans would have to work with Democrats to decide the election and there’s at least a slight chance that cooperation and compromise would occur more often. Republicans and conservative Democrats who reluctantly voted for Trump would get the change they wanted and our country would get a president worthy of the office.
Steven Mitchell, Littleton
It’s sad when citizens of this country don’t understand our government structure and the genius of our election process, but it’s even more pathetic when people involved in the system don’t understand it. Micheal Baca should stick to his job of upholding what Colorado voters chose and not be concerned with the rest of the country.
The Electoral College is genius and gives a voice to small states like ours. If it weren’t for the Electoral College, our country would be controlled by the most populated 10 states. The Electoral College’s job is not to support the most popular candidate nationally but to support what each individual state wants.
Democrats, get over it! Donald Trump won fair and square. I’d imagine if Hillary Clinton won the election but Trump won the popular vote, Mr. Baca wouldn’t be challenging the election.
Instead of getting rid of the Electoral College we should get rid of knowing the popular vote since it ultimately doesn’t matter.
Chet Bevilacqua, Evergreen
As Alexander Hamilton writes in the Federalist Papers, the Constitution is designed to ensure “that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” The point of the Electoral College is to preserve “the sense of the people,” while at the same time ensuring that a president is chosen “by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice.”
Donald Trump is in no way “endowed with the requisite qualifications” to be president. Not even close. If 37 electors flip for Hillary Clinton, the will of the voters will be respected, this looming disaster will be averted, and it will be entirely constitutional.
Andrew R. Lewis, Englewood
If you only used the popular vote to decide the presidency, then the large cities and most populous states would make that decision, leaving a large percentage of the country out. That is where the candidates would campaign and where almost all of the money and projects would go. After all, that is where they are elected. It isn’t any different from how it worked with the 13 original states.
Only five times in our history has there been a difference between the popular and the electoral vote. The colored map of the past Electoral College was very interesting. Something to think about — equalizing the vote regardless of where you live.
Peggy Stevens, Aurora
Re: Nov. 16 editorial.
The shadow that you reference in your editorial on the efforts to have the Electoral College outcome reflect the popular vote is actually a dark cloud that already exists.
Americans expect voting to be “one man, one vote,” but it is not even close with the allocation of electors to state population totals. Colorado has 10 times the population of Wyoming but only three times the electors.
While is it important that all areas of the country are represented, the allocation is already “out of whack,” as you put it. More than 75 percent of the American population lives in just 20 states. That is the economic engine of the United States, yet the political power now falls to the 30 small rural states that will never give it up voluntarily — letap not kid ourselves otherwise.
If this problem is going to be solved reasonably, it is going to have to happen in the Supreme Court and now is the time to do it. To start that process, some electors must take independent action.
Randi Doeker, Denver
Re: Nov. 16 letters to the editor.
Letter-writer Hilary Morland contends, “Both Democrats and Republicans need to be aware of and disturbed by the fact that this election has violated a basic principle of democracy.” I remind her the Founding Fathers never intended our country to be a pure democracy. The United States of America is a republic governed as a constitutional democracy. Thankfully, the Founding Fathers wisely recognized the right of all member states to have a voice in the election of a president. People in our great nation should never become subservient to states with the highest population density. We are compelled to remember and never abandon the principle “we the people.”
Michael Massarotti, Broomfield
Yes, there are challenges to the Electoral College. It has the ability to dilute votes in states that heavily favor one party. Once you secure minimum votes to win the state, the rest is overkill.
For those who are frustrated because Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, let me pose this: I didn’t like either candidate, or the alternatives. So I wrote someone in. I did this because Colorado is no longer a swing state, we’re “blue.” There was never a doubt in my mind which candidate would win our state.
But in a popular vote, I would have rethought what I was doing. How many other people in states like New York, Texas or California felt the same way? And would this have changed the popular vote numbers? I think so.
Dirk Rasmussen, Denver
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