I also don't know where they got my name and address. Maybe it was contributed by one of those Indian schools, or those people who want me to send money to Russia to "feed starving Holocaust survivor widows." They got it right, though, even to my middle initial and nine digit zip code. They even included a "Member ID" on the form! I don't recall applying! Was there some kind of initiation ceremony, I wonder? I certainly didn't solicit this crap!

What Martha, or Marth, wants me to do is send her money to "fix the broken electoral college." She started her letter by insulting me, claiming that she and I have "something in common," namely, "that whoever wins the most popular votes should become President of the United States."

That's dumb! I don't agree with it at all! The Electoral College isn't "broken" at all. It's working just fine, just like the Founding Fathers intended. The Constitution gives to the States (and, most recently, the District of Columbia), not the voters at large, the power to elect the President. Specifically, "Article II: Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress." How those electors are chosen is up to the States. Most States choose them by popular vote. The majority of them use a "winner-take-all" system in which all the State's electors are awarded to the candidate gaining the most popular votes. Maine and Nebraska allow individual congressional districts to each elect one elector by the voters in each district.

The United States Supreme Court upheld the right of States to determine their own methods of appointing the electors specified by Article II of the US Constitution in McPherson v. Blacker and Bush_v._Gore. Legally, the States can throw darts, consult tea leaves or use any other method lawfully chosen by their governments to appoint electors. It's their call!

Ms. Tierney is advocating the "National Popular Vote Compact," an "agreement among States to guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 States and the District of Columbia." This is an "agreement" among all of the States (!) that, regardless of who voted for whom in which States, all of the electors in all of the States (and DC) would simply ignore the will of their own people and throw all their electoral votes behind whichever Presidential candidate acquires 270 electoral votes. Her letter does not make it clear when the switch would happen. Since the electoral votes are not certified until January 6th, one would assume the switch would happen before then. Which States' votes would be counted first, do you suppose?

I see a bad moon arisin'!

If I understand what she is proposing, if California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, New Jersey and Virginia, plus any one other State, or DC, should vote for a particular candidate, not a single vote in any other State would matter! All the other voters in the United States would be disenfranchised!

Talk about "stolen elections!"

Twenty six percent of the States, possibly only 26 percent of United States voters, would decide who becomes President! How is that better than what we do now? Why would any State agree to disenfranchise its voters this way? How long would this "agreement" last after a contested election? What would happen then? Is Ms. Tierney freaking CRAZY?

The Founding Fathers wanted to keep the election of the President from becoming a national popularity contest by the mob, which seems to be precisely what Ms. Tierney favors. I would certainly vote against any Mississippi legislator who would propose, support, endorse or vote for anything this stupid, and our legislators are not known as the Nation's brightest by a long shot!

During my lifetime, I have seen many marginalized groups of citizens, Jews, Catholics, Germans, Asians, young adults and Spanish speakers, acquire the political power due to them by reason of their demographic representation. In all cases, they have had to overcome the differences that may have been perceived by others as making them "less American" than straight white Anglo-Saxon Protestant men. The small minorities of people of color and unconventional gender identification have inhibited their own advance in this regard by stridently, and sometimes violently, identifying themselves as only "partly" American, to their ongoing disadvantage, discrimination, and sorrow! Too bad for them!

Women, who represent over 50 percent of the population, are on the borderline. They have finally achieved parity as registered voters and membership on the Supreme Court. But only 18 percent of our governors, 30 percent members of Congress and 30 percent of State legislators are women. No woman has even been elected President! In my opinion, it ill behooves any woman at this time in history, to identify herself with any idea as utterly stupid as this one! It makes women as a group look politically incompetent!

There are certainly arguments in favor of popular vote for the President, some of them even worthy of serious consideration. But that's not the way we do things here. The way we do things is to leave to the States the authority to elect the President and the decision about how they are each going to do that, and give each of them a voice proportional roughly to their population, with a little advantage to sparsely populated States. It represents just one of the many compromises that the Founding Fathers found necessary to resolve the many differences of opinion about how our Nation should operate. I think they did a remarkable job. Those who don't agree are free to live elsewhere, and God be with them!

The Constitution of the United States may be the greatest achievement of mankind ever, perhaps the greatest that ever can be. Our Constitution is so good, it has been imitated by virtually every modern nation on the face of the earth. The first ten Amendments, the Bill of Rights, were not so much changes as they were additions, kind of an "Article VIII" that didn't fit conveniently into the other seven Articles. In spite of the fact that the Bill of Rights has had unforeseen consequences, it has generally turned out well.

Not so with the other amendments. The 11th Amendment has been controversial since its passage! The 12th Amendment contained a serious flaw that required another Amendment, the 20th, to rectify; and an oversight that was finally resolved only by the 25th Amendment 163 years later. The 13th Amendment, with the best of intentions, created a permanently destitute subclass of citizens that has never demonstrated either the intention or, in fact, the capability to become integrated into mainstream society. The 14th Amendment created an avenue to citizenship for foreign nationals who have no other connection with the United States other than that their mothers happened to be under US jurisdiction when they gave birth. The 15th Amendment gave voting rights to citizens who hadn't a clue about what they were doing, and the 16th Amendment repudiated the Constitution's prohibition on penalizing industry and inventiveness and instead subsidized sloth and complacency. It created the "benefits" of the IRS and Income Tax.

The 18th Amendment was so bad it was repealed in its entirety by the 21st Amendment, which in turn did nothing to address the original underlying problems of manufacture, sale and abuse of addicting, debilitating drugs. The 19th Amendment gave women the same right to vote as men without requiring an equal commitment to industry, economic development, education or national defense, with predictable results. The 24th Amendment guaranteed voting rights to citizens so unable to earn a living that they couldn't even pay poll tax, and the 26th Amendment gave voting rights to 1/7 of all citizen children who, as a group, are well below even the mediocre median wage-earning and educational achievement levels of other voters in every single State! Finally, the 27th Amendment failed to achieve the specific intention for which it was passed, to eliminate the ability of members of Congress to determine their own compensation!

This historical experience demonstrates that changing the fundamental way our Government works should be done with the greatest caution, and then only to meet an overwhelming need that can be met no other way. In spite of the occasional minor glitch, Ms. Tierney's arguments do not demonstrate that such a need exists, that it is overwhelming, or that it could not be met otherwise.

Since the 2016 general election, there has been a national trend to discount the will of the voters and to declare victory by trickery and deceit. The Republicans hedged their bets that year by declaring that the Presidential election was "rigged," but joyfully embraced the election of their incompetent candidate. They tried it again in 2020 when he lost. Former KPNX weather girl Kari Lake has yet to concede her 2022 loss to the overwhelmingly more politically experienced and qualified Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs. No claims of massive voter fraud in such elections have been shown to be credible.

There are also Americans who believe that a small number of malcontents should be allowed to overcome the demonstrated will of the electorate by force and violence. One Presidential candidate has publicly claimed that we should "suspend the Constitution" to achieve this goal! They are going to prison in increasing numbers! I'm not really comfortable with these people voting, let alone practicing law! Perhaps they would do well to move to someplace with a different form of government, like Travis King, for example!

My suggestion would be that United States voters just elect the most qualified candidates! At the moment, I seem to be in the minority.

John Lindorfer