Maine should not join the National Popular Vote Compact and give up a state right that was put in place by the founders of our country (“Maine committee endorses bill to elect president by ‘popular vote’,” March 5).

Currently Maine gets four Electoral College votes of a national total 538 votes needed to elect a president. Two votes are based on state population and are roughly equivalent to the popular vote. The other two are based on the number of senators, which are the same for each state.

The reason for this is to allow states with smaller populations (like Maine) to have more influence in choosing a president than it would by popular vote.

According to the Federal Election Commission, Maine cast 747,927 presidential votes of 136,669,237 nationally cast votes, or 0.547 percent of the total, in 2016. However, it cast four of 538 total electoral votes, giving Mainers an effective 0.743 percent of the vote.

While I can understand populous states wanting to overturn this long standing election process, why would Mainers want to have its legislators give this constitutional protection away under L.D. 816?

Chad Clark

Readfield