In 2008 Republicans joined Democrats to void the electoral college in Illinois. Kirk Dillard was front and center in the destruction. Jim Edgar thinks he knows what the Founding Fathers meant, so he supported re-writing the Constitution.
Illinois electoral college votes will now go to whatever candidate wins the popular nationwide vote. A Republican could win Illinois and still not get the 20 electoral votes. Did you know? Kirk Dillard wants to be governor when he doesn’t like the Constitution as written? I guess “preserve, protect and defend . . . ” won’t be high on his agenda either.
http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/pages/states.php?s=IL
Illinois state Sen. Kirk W. Dillard (R-Hinsdale), a chief co-sponsor of the bill who is also chairman of the DuPage County Republican Party said:
“I think the bill is good for both political parties in Illinois since we’ve been neglected by national presidential candidates of both parties,”
“I believe this change doesn’t help either party, it helps the American public’s interest. Americans never quite get the Electoral College. It makes the public feel their vote doesn’t count.”
“I’ve studied a myth among some Republicans that this empowers cities. The statistics do not bear that out.”
Here’s the history of the electorial college:
The Constitutional Convention of 1787 considered several methods of electing the President, including selection by Congress, by the governors of the states, by the state legislatures, by a special group of Members of Congress chosen by lot, and by direct popular election. Late in the convention, the matter was referred to the Committee of Eleven on Postponed Matters, which devised the electoral college system in its original form. This plan, which met with widespread approval by the delegates, was incorporated into the final document with only minor changes. It sought to reconcile differing state and federal interests, provide a degree of popular participation in the election, give the less populous states some additional leverage in the process by providing “senatorial” electors, preserve the presidency as independent of Congress, and generally insulate the election process from political manipulation.
The Constitution gave each state a number of electors equal to the combined total of its membership in the Senate (two to each state, the “senatorial” electors) and its delegation in the House of Representatives (currently ranging from one to 52 Members). The electors are chosen by the states “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct “(U.S. Constitution, Article II, section 1).
The reason that the Constitution calls for this extra layer, rather than just providing for the direct election of the president, is that most of the nation’s founders were actually rather afraid of democracy. James Madison worried about what he called “factions,” which he defined as groups of citizens who have a common interest in some proposal that would either violate the rights of other citizens or would harm the nation as a whole. Madison’s fear – which Alexis de Tocqueville later dubbed ”the tyranny of the majority” – was that a faction could grow to encompass more than 50 percent of the population, at which point it could ”sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens.” Madison has a solution for tyranny of the majority: “A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking.”
Of course, this is only a brief recap of the framework — and the system has evolved over time. You can read more about the history over at History.com.
Read the explanation given by the group mounting this effort at: http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/pages/explanation.php
Think about it. Al Gore would have been President.
