In establishing the Electoral College, our founding
fathers created a mechanism intended to achieve two goals:
1) to guarantee a minimal level of
representation for sparsely populated states
2) to ensure that those chosen to serve as
President of the United States would be qualified to hold that position.
If our founding fathers intended the Electoral
College to be nothing more than a rubber stamp on election day vote tallies,
they could have stopped with the first goal ─ making the process no more than a
simple mathematical calculation.
Instead, they deliberately inserted a fail-safe protocol requiring electors
to validate that every individual ascending to the Presidency have the
requisite qualifications and not pose a threat to the foundations of The Republic.
It is noteworthy that in the weeks
leading up to the recent election, virtually every major American news
organization across the entire political and ideological spectrum, issued
warnings that Donald Trump was unfit, unqualified and a threat to our American
democracy.
Historically conservative publications stood side-by-side
with liberal and moderate publications to warn, in unison, of the threat Donald
Trump presented to the survival of The Republic. If that unprecedented confluence of agreement
is not enough to alert us that now is the time to invoke the Electoral
College's fail-safe mechanism, then when?
Perhaps the hardest question is not so much about if
or when, but how. My suggestion, in
deference to the fact that it was a Republican candidate who won the most number of
electoral votes, is that the Electoral College appoint Mitt Romney, the last
qualified Republican nominee, to serve as President. And in a gesture of unity and an
acknowledgement that this is an American concern and not a partisan one, that they
appoint a Democrat, Joe Biden, to serve as Vice President.
This plan won't make everybody happy, but it will overcome a looming threat to the very foundations upon which this country was established, and it will do it in the least disruptive and most unifying way. And, most importantly, it will ensure the preservation of The Republic as the founders intended.
