“In a democracy like ours how can a candidate who gets more popular votes in a national election be denied the presidency?”
That question contains two fundamental fallacies. First, we are not a democracy and never have been. This is a constitutional republic. Second, contrary to a widely held misconception, we do not have a national election for president. We have 51 separate elections, one for each of the fifty states and the District of Columbia. Yes, we go through the exercise of tallying the total national popular vote, but that’s just for curiosity’s sake; it has no legal bearing on the election.
Article IV, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution reads: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of government.” The word “democracy” appears not a single time in the Constitution, Bill of Rights, or Declaration of Independence. We pledge allegiance to the flag and to the “republic” for which it stands. This is not a trivial distinction. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall proclaimed: “Between a balanced Republic and a Democracy, the difference is between order and chaos.”
Voting is certainly a democratic institution, but the founders took great care to craft a system sensitive to the excesses of direct democracy. While seats in the House of Representatives are apportioned by the relative population of each state, all states get just two seats in the Senate where each state has equal power. That prevents large population states with big cities from running roughshod over lesser populated states.
Other distinctly anti-democratic safeguards are the Bill of Rights to protect individuals from the tyranny of the majority; separation of powers; checks and balances; judicial review; the presidential veto; and the Electoral College.
Votes in the Electoral College are also apportioned to temper the advantage of the large population states. While each state gets the number of electoral votes equal to its seats in the House, every state gets an additional two electoral votes (equal to its two Senate seats) regardless of population. Each state then casts all its electoral votes for the candidate that wins a plurality of the popular vote in that state (except for Nebraska and Maine which have hybrid systems).
The Electoral College is not the lofty, independent assemblage that Alexander Hamilton originally envisioned in Federalist No. 68. On Election Day (or election months these days) its role is just a process, a formality to tabulate the national total of candidate electoral votes, but it still has a solid justification. It forces candidates to address the concerns of voters in all of the states. It reinforces the principle that the nation is not just a collective, amorphous blob, but a confederation of individual states, each retaining some sovereign powers and unique qualities, values and agendas.
The left and its political vehicle, the Democrat party, knows where its power centers reside. In the big cities of California, New York City, Boston, Chicago, and in the northwest; along with labor unions, government employees, woke minorities, academia, and the media.
But certainly not in the south or middle and rural America. In the 2026 presidential election Donald Trump won in 2,661 U.S. counties, Kamala Harris in 451. Trump won in 31 states, Harris in 19. 26 states have Republican governors, Democrats 24. Republicans control 28 state legislatures, Democrats 18 (4 are split). This is the voting block that stands in the way of absolute Democrat control. It’s the obstacle they hope to neuter by killing the Electoral College. Republicans cover a lot of land; Democrats have the congested urban head count. Bernie, AOC, Mamdani, Lizzy Warren & company want to eliminate the Electoral College not to make America more democratic but to make it more “Democrat” on the road to their socialist utopia.
The socialist agenda of progressive Democrats is to eliminate the Electoral College and replace it with a national popular vote. The Democratic Socialists of America, with its increasing influence in the Democrat party, would also eliminate the U.S. Senate and the Supreme Court, vesting all legislative power in the U.S. House. This is precisely what our founders didn’t intend. James Madison described democracy as mobocracy, where passion overwhelms reason. In Philadelphia, when Benjamin Franklin was asked what kind of government the Constitutional Convention had just given us, he replied, “A republic if you can keep it.”
Fortunately, killing the Electoral College, the Senate, and SCOTUS would call for amendments to the U.S. Constitution. And that requires ratification by three-quarters of the states, no easy task, thanks to our founders.
Longtime KOA radio talk host and columnist for the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News Mike Rosen now writes for Complete Colorado.
