Arkansas Throws Its Vote In the Fire

The Arkansas House ("GrabFest") has decided to ignore Arkansas voters in Presidential elections. They will hand over Arkansas six electoral votes to whoever the rest of the country votes for no matter who Arkansans actually vote for. Citizens of Arkansas could vote for a candidate by an 80% margin and still see our vote go for the other candidate.

The reason they have done this is obvious. Arkansans voted for John McCain in the last election, and George W. Bush before that. Our Democratic legislature doesn't like our choices in those elections and would have preferred to ignore Arkansas in those elections. From now on they will be able to.

Our Founding Fathers set up a great Federal system that has served us well for 200 years. The Electoral College has produced George Washington, FDR, Barack Obama, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, Harry Truman, and Thomas Jefferson. It has worked well. Yet somehow we trust the motley collection in Little Rock that has kept us at 49th position "to fix it" by handing our votes to "whoever the masses of people in the big states vote for".

This has nothing to do with politics to me. I believe in the Federal system no matter who it chooses for the Presidency. I believe that abandoning the Electoral College will have far reaching negative effects on our system that may ultimately lead to instability and trouble between various regions.

I expect that candidates will concentrate on running up the vote in heavily urban areas because they get the most bang for the buck doing that. Without the Electoral College they can safely ignore places like Wyoming, South Dakota, Idaho, or Arkansas and concentrate on running up totals in Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, and Dallas. That will ultimately exacerbate problems between urban and rural that the Electoral College smoothed over.

There will be unintended consequences. But for now, Arkansans won't have to worry about voting for President because Arkansas will ignore them, and vote for whoever every other state votes for. We will be that kid who always said "whatever you guys wanna do".

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