I read David Felley’s letter about the need to abolish the Electoral College with sadness. He states “we are one country and not a collection of little independent states.” We are not one federal republic, but a nation of 50 united states, each with its own needs, values and issues.

One of the greatest issues of our time is the dependence we are placing on the federal government to “cure all of our problems” when mostly all the do is create bigger ones. Oregon could use an electoral college due to our differences in the urban west side and the rural east, and the separation on different issues that each has, but unfortunately we don’t, so we have to suffer through the problems that our state government create trying to solve issues we don’t even have.

Felley states that the Electoral College causes candidates to focus all their energy on a few swing states. Without an Electoral College, they would be focusing on the top five most populated states and forgetting the needs of the rest of the nation! So that the folks in Wyoming get any kind of representation at all, I think their vote should be many times more value that a vote in California.

Our forefathers did a amazing job in setting up our government. We need to be very careful when we talk about changing it.

Joel Hasse

La Grande