Consider the following thought experiment.

After seven games, Team A wins the World Series.

Some fans do not accept the legitimacy of Team A’s win. Why? Turns out Team A’s wins were 1-0. Team B’s wins were 10-0. Therefore, Team B wins the Series 30-4.

This is an absurdity. The rule is: The team that wins four games wins the Series, plain and simple.

The notion that each game is a separate contest, however, doesn’t sit well with many Americans in the way we elect our presidents. Each presidential election is actually 51 elections (50 states and the District of Columbia).

Maine holds one of these contests and has its own interests. The will of Mainers ought to be respected, not shoved aside by the voters of the nation’s largest cities.

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is designed to sidestep the electoral vote process.

National Popular Vote is bad for the following reasons:

• It will urbanize presidential elections at the expense of the rural population.

• It’s at odds with the federal character of the nation, a nation of sovereign states that elect the president.

• The Electoral College system isolates voter fraud in the state where it occurs. National Popular Vote would nationalize voter fraud.

National Popular Vote has gained steam since the 2016 election. For many, Donald Trump’s election was unacceptable.

I believe, however, that the desire to change the election process goes beyond any particular election.

There is talk of abolishing the U.S. Senate, too. Both the Senate and the Electoral College are anti-democratic creations of the Founding Fathers. The men who gave us the Constitution and the nation are viewed as flawed individuals who either owned slaves or tolerated slavery. A rejection of the Electoral College is a rebuke of the Founding Fathers.

Sadly, these feelings of rebuke cannot be easily reasoned away, even with a simple baseball metaphor.

Paul Johnson

Falmouth