The Electoral College has increasingly come to be regarded as a quaint 18th-century affectation, along the lines of snuff boxes.  Colorado is poised to become the 13th signatory to the National Popular Vote initiative, adding to the eleven states plus the District of Colombia that have already signed on to this interstate compact, whereby the electoral votes from these states would be cast in favor of whichever presidential candidate wins the popular vote.  This bill would take effect when enough states sign on to add up to at least 270 electoral votes.  The addition of Colorado's electors will bring that total to 181, or about two thirds there.  We may be a few short years away from fundamentally transforming how we elect our presidents.

Although John Adams may have been the first to use the phrase "tyranny of the majority" in 1788, he was by no means alone among the founders in fearing the tyranny of "majority rule" as much as they feared the tyranny of a despot; hence, they founded a constitutional republic as opposed to a pure democracy.  Of the thirteen original states that signed the founding documents, the less populated of those would never have agreed to join a union that ceded such lopsided power to the most populous states if presidents were elected from only the popular vote.

Notwithstanding the problems of the disenfranchisement of voters from any state more or less outside California, or the unknown and unquantifiable significance of voter fraud in a close national election, I doubt that any of the above arguments matter a whit to the governors and legislatures of Md., N.J., Hawaii, Ill., Wash., Mass., D.C., Vt., Calif., R.I., N.Y., Conn., and soon to be Colo.  Not all of these signatories to the interstate compact are large, populous states, but they all stand united under the care and control of the Democratic Party.

What is to be done?  Is it best to ignore this movement and hope it dies on the vine?  If the oppressed minority from a few flyover states and a couple of outliers were to push back, would that just fuel the flames and hasten the day when this interstate compact crosses the 270-electoral-vote threshold?

I am of the opinion that if it is mob rule the people want, they can have it in more than one flavor.  It has been a "feature" of recent elections that the populous coastal blue states have dominated the popular vote, while the Republican candidates have won a large percentage of the counties across the country (over 70% in 2008 and 2012, about 85% in 2016).  I thereby propose an Initiative to Preserve the Electoral System, whereby red-leaning states would form their own compact that would award their electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the majority of the counties nationwide.  So far, only one side is playing this game, but if only a few states signed on to such a compact, with maybe a big fish like Texas, the Left might begin to fear that it may have started something that could leave it much worse off than where it currently stands.  Let the game begin in earnest.