Seminary President: Ending Electoral College Would Silence States, Allow Radical President to Take Over

Several Democratic politicians are touting the benefits of eliminating the Electoral College, namely presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., likely in order to prevent another president—like Donald Trump—from being elected by electoral votes rather than popular ones.

But Southern Evangelical Seminary (SES, ses.edu) President Dr. Richard Land says the nation is at risk when we begin rewriting the U.S. Constitution to appease our own agendas. Land explored this topic in a recent installment of his two-minute daily radio feature, “Bringing Every Thought Captive.”

“The progressive left-wingers who are dominating the Democratic presidential primary process seem intent on tearing down the constitutional structure that has allowed us to maintain the oldest representative democracy in the world, going on 230 years so far, from 1789 to 2019,” Land said. “Their latest bad idea is doing away with the Electoral College, which was necessary for the Constitution to be ratified in the first place. Smaller states were terrified of being steamrolled by larger states, and the so-called Connecticut Compromise gave us the Electoral College and equal representation for each state in the Senate—two for each state—and representation by population in the House of Representatives. Even with these safeguards, four of our first five presidents were from Virginia.

“Those seeking to subvert the Electoral College want to have whoever wins the popular vote be elected as president,” Land continued. “Because doing away with the Electoral College would require a constitutional amendment, at least a dozen states have passed laws that say that their electoral votes would go to whoever wins the popular vote even if that candidate did not win the presidential contest in their state. Believe it or not, that means that if Candidate A won the majority of the votes, for instance, in Illinois, that state’s electors would vote for Candidate B in the Electoral College if Candidate B won the popular vote nationwide. This would disenfranchise and negate the vote of the people of that state making their votes null and void. And that’s just the beginning of the mayhem and chaos such action would cause.”

Land added that the most likely scenario being pursued by the left is to have enough states pass laws saying that they will cast their state’s electoral votes for the winner of the popular vote, even if that person lost the vote in their particular state.

“If enough states do that,” he said, “then the Electoral College would effectively be subverted. This would lead to instability and chaos. Why? The leftists’ goal is to elect the president with the most popular votes, even if they lose the Electoral College vote. Almost immediately, however, you would have significantly more than two candidates running for president. Why? Because they would just need more votes than the other candidates to get the electoral votes needed to win the presidency.”

Therefore, said Land, who serves on President Donald Trump’s advisory board for faith issues, rather than having a president with more popular support, the country would end up with one who had significantly less popular support.

“With five or six candidates, all one candidate would need to do is to get more votes than the other candidates (perhaps as low as 25 or 30 percent of the vote) to win the presidency outright,” he said. “Ironically, America would end up with a president with a smaller base of support who might very well be more radical and out of the mainstream than any previous president. We must be very careful when we start messing with our founding documents.”

At SES, students delve into classroom discussions about topics like these through the recent addition of the “Philosophy, Politics and Economics” program. Offered primarily at just a few top-tier universities around the world, the PPE program introduces students to the Christian worldview of how philosophy, politics and economics intersect, focusing on the works of Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Henry Hazlitt, Karl Marx, Thomas Aquinas, Robert Sirico, Jay Richards and others.

For 27 years, SES has existed to equip students and ministry leaders to share the gospel from an intelligent, informed and rational biblical worldview. Courses, conferences, seminars, guest speakers and more seek to accomplish this longstanding mission. Central to this purpose is the provision of a biblical basis and an academic understanding of believers’ commitment to Christ. Therefore, SES seeks to provide an educational opportunity where the Christian worldview is both a framework for thinking and a dynamic for living.