I was pleased to read your March 7 editorial (“Our View: Compact wrong way to fix Electoral College”).

As a member of the Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee, I was the lone Democrat to vote against the bill that you correctly described as a “back-door approach” to fixing the Electoral College system so that the popular vote controls the election of our president and vice president. I agree that the logic behind this interstate compact is short-sighted. Every election is different, and what helps you this election cycle may well be your downfall the next.

My objections, moreover, are founded on experience. As a young staff member of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights in the 1970s and ’80s, we spent much of our time fighting off amendments we thought did not belong in the Constitution or were bad policy, including banning flag burning (which no longer seems to be an issue), busing for school integration (likewise) and “Life begins at conception” abortion bans (which would outlaw many forms of contraception).

The Constitution provides an explicit way to change the Electoral College: by amendment. The framers made that process difficult but not impossible, as evident by the many amendments adopted since 1789. If enough people want a popular election of the president (as I do), we can achieve it the old-fashioned, constitutionally correct way.

Janice Cooper

Democratic state representative

Yarmouth

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