EDITORIAL: Colorado tries to crush rural interests

Feb. 16--Colorado's increasingly urbanized Front Range has about 10 times more people than conservative neighbor Wyoming. More and more, Colorado and Wyoming have less in common.

Denver favors zero-emission car mandates. Pot stores outnumber McDonald's 12-to-1. The City Council voted 11-1 to start a heroin injection house. The May ballot contains a bill of rights for the homeless and a measure to legalize psychedelic mushrooms.

Urban elites want to outlaw coal; rural miners would lose their jobs.

To Wyoming's rural farmers, ranchers and miners, this all must seem like a crazy drug house next door.

To more fully grasp today's urban-rural divide, consider New York's recent open celebration of late-term abortion. The pink lights on One World Trade Center nauseated Bible Belt Christians, known to urbanites as flyover rubes.

Rural America's need for the constitutional hedge against urban domination has never seemed more crucial.

Yet Colorado wants to eliminate this constitutional provision, mostly in a sour grapes response to Hillary Clinton losing the electoral college vote to Donald Trump.

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact consists of 11 blue states and the District of Columbia, each member pledging to give future electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the popular vote. Colorado is likely to be the 12th member soon, as a bill races through the Legislature. Gov. Jared Polis has said he supports the bill.

By signing it, he would bring the compact to 181 combined votes. It would not become active without membership totaling 270, the number needed to win an election.

State legislatures ratified the 12th Amendment in 1804, codifying today's electoral system. Five presidents, starting with John Quincy Adams in 1824, took office after losing the popular vote.

James Madison feared the popular vote would empower special interest urban "factions" to dominate small states in elections. French historian Alexis de Tocqueville called it the "tyranny of the majority."

The 12th Amendment represents only one of the checks on the democratic concept of majority rule. The Bill of Rights protects individuals from majorities that might tread on speech, religion, self-defense, property rights and more.

Electoral College defenders have an uphill fight against the perceived virtue of unchecked majority rule. In a perpetual moronization of the culture, schools and colleges conflate "democracy" with freedom and patriotism. They seldom explain the limited role of democratic process in a free country founded for the glory of individuals and states. This makes the popular vote an easy concept to pitch.

As Colorado Democrats seek political revenge by joining the compact, they jeopardize our future votes. If our state overwhelming votes for a candidate who loses the popular vote, all nine of our electors will help elect a president Colorado opposed. Maybe that will seem normal to hallucinogenic mushroom voters but not to anyone else.

Subverting the 12th Amendment threatens America's diverse mix of urban-rural culture, industry, values and trends and gives sustained control to growing legions of urban progressives who sneer at Mayberry from 30,000 feet.

The Gazette editorial board

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