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NY Post
New York Post
7 Jul 2024


NextImg:British elections show the virtues of the Electoral College and ALL the Founders’ checks and balances

Last week’s British elections — or, rather the results — ought to be food for thought for all the Americans who’ve griped about “undemocratic” features of the US system, especially the Electoral College.

The Labor Party won a huge majority — 412 out of 650 seats, 63% of Parliament — by carrying just 34% of the popular vote, its worst showing in the last several full elections.

This gives new Prime Minister Keir Starmer total control of both the executive and legislative branches of Britain’s government, and thus the ability to remake the judicial branch should he so choose.

Under current law, he doesn’t have to call a new election for five years — and Labor can change that law to give itself a longer tenure if it so chooses.

By comparison, the fact that a US candidate can win the White House by carrying the Electoral College despite losing the national popular vote doesn’t seem such a huge bug.

Especially since the House and Senate are elected separately, so that a different party regularly controls one or both; indeed, control often shifts during a president’s term in office.

Yes, the United States also has an informal two-party system, whereas the multiplicity of Britain’s parties make flukes like Friday’s more likely.

But then there are the rest of the UK results: The utterly discredited Conservative Party took 24% of the vote for 121 seats in Parliament (19%), the Liberal Democrats, 12.2% for 72 seats — and the fledgling Reform party, 14.3% for only five seats.

That is: The No. 4 party won 14 times as many seats as the No. 3 one.

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Many factors drive this mess; the Brits understand them and seem OK with their system.

But we’ll stick with our system of checks and balance, thanks.

It diffuses power among the branches of the federal government, and between the feds and the states, allowing the peoples of Florida, Texas, California, New York etc. to choose significantly different paths — even as the brutally-hard-to-amend Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, strictly limits what any level of government can do.

The Electoral College, and the US Senate, also ensure that high-population states can’t bully smaller ones.

Progressives have been hating on the US Constitution since at least the days of Woodrow Wilson — who, ironically, himself only first won the presidency with less than 42% of the popular vote, then fumed endlessly about all the checks on his power.

Yet the Founders’ design let 13 small colonies grow into the strongest, most free nation on Earth — which is still the planet’s chief guardian against the forces of autocracy.

Let’s not let any of those checks and balances go.