> Currently the only thing stopping big states from mob-ruling smaller states IS the electoral college. Although the President has a lot of power to carry out

> Currently the only thing stopping big states from mob-ruling smaller states IS the electoral college. Although the President has a lot of power to carry out immediate action using the agencies under his control, his powers over the long term are extremely limited relative to the legislature and courts. The founding fathers intended that the Senate and Supreme Court be the firewall against the mob rule, not the president or electoral college. Hamilton's argument for the electoral college in Federalist No 68 was that the electors would be people qualified to be the last firewall against choosing an authoritarian, demagogue, or someone otherwise "not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications" to hold the single most powerful position in the nation. AFAICT he and the other founding fathers considered maintaining a balance of power between large and small states to be a very secondary consideration because that was the purpose of the courts and upper chamber. > If we fully embrace the 10th amendment and give states the comfortable and regular power to reject federal policy, then this becomes a self correcting problem. The states have always had the power to do that. From refusing to help federal agencies enforce prohibition to sanctuary cities outright interfering with immigration enforcement to lower courts that routinely ignore higher courts. Even if states could do more to reject federal policy, the Federal government is the only sugar daddy in town that can support their healthcare, social security, defense, and infrastructure habits. The National Minimum Drinking Age Act, for example, didn't set the minimum age to 18 but penalized any state with a drinking age below 21 by stripping them of 10% of their annual federal highway contribution. Now the minimum drinking age is 21 nationwide, despite the fact that any state could have easily ignored the directive at the cost of billions a year in infrastructure spending. As long as the federal government has the money, it has the power to make the states do almost anything it wants.