Regarding Aron Solomon’s June 20 advocacy for eliminating the Electoral College:

The Oregon Legislature took us over this cliff in 2019 when they passed the national popular vote interstate compact. That this is not well known is not surprising since it got virtually no media coverage. The plan calls for enough states to join the compact to equal 270 electoral votes-the number needed to elect a President. If that happens, compact state borders and sovereignty would become meaningless. Election irregularities in any compact state would become the problem of every compact state. Non-compact states would retain their voice, but ostensibly it wouldn’t matter. Imagine a two-tiered election system in which every single contest gets decided by the courts.

America is not a democracy — never has been. We are a Constitutional Republic with built-in state sovereignty. Our founders recognized, from a deep study of history, the truth of Ben Franklin’s statement: “democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what’s for dinner.”

Yes, we conduct elections via a one-person/one vote process, with every state conducting two popular elections for president. The miracle of our election infrastructure is the recognition that each of us lives in a state. If we come to be dissatisfied over how our state is operated, we can work to reform the state or relocate to a state that would treat us differently. Each state has the number of electoral votes to equal their representation in Congress, where seats in the House of Representatives are proportional to population. Makeup of the Senate is intentionally equal, because no state has a greater or lesser right to exist than any other.

Consider our non-popular vote election model alongside the World Series in any sport. Imagine, Team A wins game one by a score of 30-0 and loses the next six games by scores of 2-1. Who wins the series? Our system is designed so the winning candidate must secure support in multiple states and regions of the country.

People may not know that since 1905 the Electoral College has led to the election of an equal number of Republican and Democratic presidents. Some have been pretty good, some not so much. But every one of them knew the rules of the game. And every voter has the same responsibility. The winning candidate is the one who finds favor among multiple regions and constituents. Moreover, state “battlegrounds” are simply those where it takes people longer to decide who they will support.

As for “the erosion of democratic norms worldwide,” here are the countries who choose their executive by popular vote: Angola, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Cameroon, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, The Gambia, Honduras, Iceland, Kiribati, Malawi, Mexico, Nicaragua, Palestine, Panama, Paraguay, Philippines, Rwanda, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Tanzania and Venezuela. 

Of this list, 11 have populations under 10 million. The remaining are either monolithic, unstable, and/or dictatorships. None covers multiple time zones and represents 350 million-plus people. By any measure, this is not who America is.

Roberta Schlechter

Portland