The U.S., a Representative Republic NOT a Democracy!
Radio Commentary, 90.7, 91.7 New Life FM, January 13, 2017 – By Sue Ella Deadwyler
In the last few years, a movement has surfaced to change the way we elect our president and vice president. For several years, proponents of that movement have introduced bills in Georgia to change the Electoral College and install a strategy they’re calling the “national popular vote”.
It surfaced again in Georgia last year when Representative Earl Ehrhart introduced H.B. 929 and Senator David Shafer introduced the same language in S.B. 376. Both bills were entitled the “Agreement Among the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote,” and both bills died in committee. However, they may be introduced again this year.
The goal of the national popular vote is to install majority rule for presidential and vice presidential elections. If that happens, the most densely populated areas in the country would single-handedly elect the president and vice president. They keep saying that’s the democratic way, but the United States is NOT a democracy.The United States is a republic, meaning the government derives all its power from the people and that power is administered by people elected to hold office for a limited time and during good behavior. The Republic of the United States is governed by the Constitution of the United States, to which all laws must conform, and which all elected officials must swear to uphold and defend. A democracy is popular government, meaning the majority rules, regardless of the law.
The danger of the national popular vote should cause the ten states and the District of Columbia to withdraw their support for it. And we, in Georgia, should ask our legislators to refuse to consider such a drastic change in national elections.
It’s disturbing to know that 47 of Georgia’s 56 senators co-sponsored Senator Shafer’s bill and 48 of Georgia’s 180 representatives co-sponsored Representative Ehrhart’s bill last session. So, I have a question for them: Do you think Georgia voters could or should trust presidential elections to a string of states on the east coast running almost uninterruptedly from Massachusetts and Boston to Northern Virginia and D.C., and a string of states on the west coast running along the Southern California coast, simply because they are densely populated?
National popular vote legislation might be introduced again this session and, if it is, it must be stopped. For Georgia Insight I’m Sue Ella Deadwyler, your Capitol correspondent.