It appears that Yarmouth Democratic Rep. Janice Cooper (“Letter to the editor: Popular-vote compact law could easily backfire,” March 12, Page A4) has spent too much time being a political activist rather than a student of how the seat of our government is chosen.
Ms. Cooper says she would support amending the Constitution to allow for a popular vote for president. If she would acquaint herself with the founding of this republic and grasp how a representative republic works, she would find her thesis is nonsensical at best.
The United States is a representative republic. It is not a democracy. In our form of government, the states, not the people, determine who is elected to the presidency, the administrator of the federal government.
The Founders and the Framers did not want the president to be selected by highly populated areas, which could have the advantage over rural and less populated areas of the country. The so-called popular vote victory in 2016 that the Democrats keep bringing up occurred only because of large voter turnout in New York and California. Remove those numbers and President Trump overwhelmingly had the numbers in his favor.
The will of the people was hardly matched by those two pockets in 2016. Every so often Democrats cry “foul” when they don’t like the results and their first instinct is to change the rules of play. Just as the Democrats did here in Maine when changing the rules that upset the will of the people in the 2nd District, they wish to do the same nationwide because of their hatred of President Trump.
Democrats who get elected to public office are bound by their oath to support the Constitution of the United States, not to alter it in order to achieve their goal of imposing their agenda on those they are elected to serve.
Jones Gallagher
North Berwick
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