Then in 2016, Donald Trump won the Electoral College despite receiving 2.1% less of the popular vote. This imbalance is primarily a 21st century phenomenon and it could, of course, change in the years to come as some states grow and other states shrink in population. Whether youre Republican or Democrat, your vote probably doesnt count the way it should. But the fact is that we are now one country, whereas in 1789 we were 13 colonies desperately trying to hold onto some semblance of their independencehence a political deal was struck that now threatens the very democracy for which they were trying to create a lasting framework. Article V sets up the manner by which an amendment is passed. Reagan would almost make a clean sweep in 1984 as well, taking 525 of 538 electoral votes and only losing Minnesota and DC. Do you support this movement? As far as the 2016 election is concerned, Hillary Clinton would still be the likely winner if the Electoral College didn't exist. First, there's the Constitutional problem. Erdogan's 'polar opposite' wants to replace him as president of Turkey. Abolishing the Electoral College seems to be the next logical step in that process. The effort in Congress to overhaul America's election system followed the contentious 1968 presidential contest. It is true that the Electoral College no longer serves its original purposes, and that it creates a grave risk that a candidate not favored by a majority of the people will, from time to time, be elected president. They disagreed so strongly that the final system wasnt adopted until the last minute, thrown together by a few delegates in a side room. By 2019, the median state was Kentucky with 4,467,673 which made it 11% of the population of California, the biggest state in the union with 39,512,223 people. FiveThirtyEight polls-only forecast have predicted. Most Americans would breathe a sigh of relief, I believe, if we had a system capable of choosing the U.S. equivalent of Theresa May instead of Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. In the first instance, states could decide to award 2 Electoral College votes (EVs) to the winner of the national popular vote (NPV) and the remainder to the winner of the state. No other advanced democracy in the world uses anything like it, and for good reason. https://saveourstates.com/threats/the-status-of-npv, https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/report/destroying-the-electoral-college-the-anti-federalist-national-popular-0. This system allows minorities to have a bigger microphone for their concerns as well. In each case, the number of faithless electors who exercised that behavior would not have had a meaningful impact on the outcome. As the graph below illustrates, over the course of the 20th century the distance between the biggest state by population and the median state increased. This is just one way the legacy of slavery still taints our politics today. It was replaced by party conventions, which eventually were replaced (almost) with strings of single or multiple state primaries and caucuses. A lot of people dont even want to talk about changing the Electoral College because of this idea. Would the federal government get into the business of administering the elections, or leave that up to state and local officials, as it does today? A second argument holds less populous states deserve the further electoral weight they gain through the senatorial bump giving each state two electors, because their minority status entitles them to additional political protection. Which states do matter? You may have heard this one in high school. "The game will not be any longer to be a [politician who is] liberal but be able to appeal to a rural Ohioan," he said. In 2016, Donald Trump won the White House by earning a majority of electoral votes, even though almost three million more Americans voted for Hillary Clinton. Paul Krugman, my Opinion colleague, wrote Thursday that "the idea that the economy is going to pose a huge problem for Democrats next year isn't backed by the available data.". But explaining exactly how it does this remains a mystery. And the reasons people think we need to keep the Electoral College the way it is, theyre all wrong. Under the current structure of the United States, there are 50 unique presidential contests instead of one nationwide affair to elect a President. Its how we run every election in the country, except the most important one of all. Nonetheless, it is likely the most viable alternative to the current Electoral College system. The supporters of the NPV are not hiding their goal: They are trying to circumvent the AK constitutional amendment process and manipulate the Electoral College out of existence.11. They simply happen to be states that become competitive because of their demography, and which are readily identifiable as such because of the increasing sophistication of political polling. Activists, with the aid of misguided state legislators, have begun to gain ground in the states, with NPV arising as a serious threat to the stability of our presidential election process. This agreement includes several states and DC, giving the electoral vote count assigned to them to the candidate who receives the most votes in the national election. In a truly national election, parties and candidates would have the incentive to turn out their votes wherever they were, fostering a deeper sense of engagement across the whole population. Two hundred years after James Madisons letter, the state winner-take-all rule is still crippling our politics and artificially dividing us. The winner of the Electoral College vote is usually the candidate who has won the popular vote. The two parties have chosen the same year in which to nominate a person whom large numbers of Americans, probably a majority, regard as unfit (though not for the same reason). To this day, people are still arguing that Al Gore was the real winner and debating whether the recount in Florida was accurate the state whose electors propelled Bush to the top. Its just basic fairness. Who verifies if a candidate is qualified to run for President? Having this structure go away would encourage more third-party development. A party system was instituted really to fulfill that old function of the Electoral College's, which is to narrow people down and get responsible people to be candidates for the presidency. This spring, numerous candidates for president expressed support for either abolishing or changing the Electoral College, which ultimately picks the U.S. president. Could Washington administer a national recount in the event of a close result? Using bots can streamline some law firm work, American Bar Association "And the way we can make that happen is that we can have national voting and that means get rid of the Electoral College.". When enough states join in this interstate compact, itll mean that the popular-vote winner will always become president. If this system were to be abolished, then every vote counted would have the exact same weight in the final tally. A New Mexico doctor describes the pain and horror of caring for COVID-19 patients. This Student Opinion prompt and a related Lesson of the Day will prepare students to participate in our live panel discussion about the Electoral College, on Oct. 22 at 1 p.m. Eastern. . The issue that could make Joe Biden unelectable is not in his control and is a far greater threat to his re-election than any single policy question. However, it is possible to win the presidency without winning the popular vote. As the Washington Post has shown, the four most populous states, California, Texas, Florida and New York are all dramatically underrepresented in todays Electoral College. There have been some unusual elections, such as the 1972 affair when Richard Nixon took 520 electoral votes to George McGoverns 16. Seventy percent of Americans between the ages of 18-29 said that the president should be chosen through a popular vote model, while just 56 percent of those over the age of 65 agreed. In this extraordinarily strange election year, debating the Electoral College might seem an odd pastime when so many other issues concern us. For instance, in 1900 New York was the biggest state in the union with 7,268,894 people and the state with the median population, Louisiana, had 1,381,625 people. Thats when the Founding Fathers crafted a compromise between those who argued for the election of the president by a vote of Congress and the election of the president by a popular vote of qualified citizens. They do not matter because they have any special civic characteristics. The Electoral College has elected a president who did not win the popular vote twice in the past 20 years, in 2000 and 2016. When the Founding Fathers built the idea of the Electoral College into the structure of the American government, their idea of information management was very different than what we have today. Third, defenders of the Electoral College also claim that it supports the underlying value of federalism. The threat is the effort to create a so-called . Ive spent the past few years obsessively analyzing the Electoral College, trying to understand the concerns of the founding fathers, doing the math from different elections. Right now, those circumstances tend to benefit Republicans in the Electoral College, while disadvantaging Democrats who have won the popular vote in seven of the last eight elections. By subscribing to this BDG newsletter, you agree to our. There have also been five elections where the eventual president didnt win a majority of the vote, including Trump in 2016. Democracy is, at its core, about fair, equal representation one person, one vote. Suddenly, every voter will count, no matter where they live. And even though it is widely acknowledged that the Electoral College is a ticking time bomb that could seriously erode American democracy, none of these attempts has been successful. Democratic presidential candidates are weighing in too. That, critics say, means devaluing the votes of many non-white voters too. But there is something called the National Popular Vote Compact. The size of a state does not affect our real political preferences, even though the Electoral College system imagines that it does. Having the states play an autonomous role in presidential elections, it is said, reinforces the division of governing authority between the nation and the states. 3. hide caption. The truth is . /content/aba-cms-dotorg/en/news/abanews/publications/youraba/2019/october-2019/q--the-electoral-college--is-it-open-for-interpretation-by-the-c, Trade, Sports & Professional Associations, Affordable Housing & Community Development Law. Alternative 2: Two electoral votes to national popular vote winner; remainder apportioned by congressional district, *Each of these races included faithless electors, such that the total of electoral votes, as shown, does not equal 538. The US presidential election takes place 3 November. A second variation would be to award two Electoral College votes from each state to the winner of the national popular vote and award the remaining electors to the winner of each congressional district (CD). # Because the District of Columbia is awarded Electoral College votes under the 23rd Amendment, we include its votes here as if it were a state. Swing or battleground states are mere accidents of geography. 6. Most Americans, by a wide margin, believe the Electoral College should be abolished. Warren says she wants to get rid of the Electoral College, and vote for president using a national popular vote. Take the Electoral College, Americas system for picking the president. Instead of dealing with these complications, a simple majority vote would always speak of the will of the people. It also stops the distribution process where California gets 55 votes, but a state like Delaware only gets 3. Parties must obtain no less than 7% of votes - either on their own or in alliance with other parties - in order to enter . In the ensuing 215 years, the Electoral College system itself has changed little, although the popular vote has been rightfully guaranteed to millions more previously denied on the basis of race, gender and age. There are also circumstances where a majority of electors might not be available, which would throw the results of the election into the House of Representatives. Abolishing the Electoral College would get rid of this confusing process. Fully overhauling the way the president is selected would take a Constitutional amendment, which would require the votes of two-thirds of the U.S. House of Representatives, two-thirds of the Senate, and three-fourths of the states. After a long battle in Florida Bush won the state narrowly, giving him an Electoral College victory of 271 to 266 over Al Gore. However, in the five presidential elections of the 21st century, two ended up with the winner of the popular vote losing the Electoral College. In each case, the number of faithless electors who exercised that behavior would not have had a meaningful impact on the outcome. The compact requires states to pass laws that would award their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote nationally. While politicians continue to put major focus on highly-populated urban cities of many states, such as Cleveland, Ohio, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Electoral College pushes candidates to address issues in states as a whole and not just in metropolitan regions. But dont forget, Bush won the popular vote four years later by three million votes. There are three basic arguments in favor of the system the framers of the Constitution gave us, with little sense of how it would actually work. All parts of the country would not be involved in the selection of the president. Its primary function is to malapportion political power, and it does so indeed, has always done so with strikingly awful. It seems to me that the original system may have been superior to what we now have. Why, or why not? When Americans are polled about the Electoral College, most of them say that they want it to disappear. Every vote matters, commented Senator Elizabet Warren (D-Mass) in an early campaign stop in Mississippi in 2019, and the way we can make that happen is that we can have national voting and that means get rid of the Electoral College.. No amount of campaigning will change that. Residents of places like Puerto Rico and Guam would have their votes be counted in the final total, and these locations consistently vote for one party. 2. 2) The Electoral College ensures that different parts of the country, such as Iowa and Ohio, are involved in selecting the president, rather than just the most populated areas. Now is the time for sober and spirited citizens from both parties to devise a new system for 2020. Note: A previous version of this post stated that awarding 2 electoral votes per state (plus D.C.) to the national popular vote winner would form a baseline of 138 votes. I used to like the idea of the Popular Vote, but now realize the Electoral College is far better for the U.S.A. Gregg says that change would radicalize politics. These states currently total 196 electoral votes, although after the 2020 census is completed, projections suggest a net loss of two seats, lowering that number to 194. Given that a change would require a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress and three-quarters of the state legislatures, it is not going to happen. This is one reason why they created checks and balances, including the Electoral College. With the divide between Democrats and Republicans currently in place, the likelihood that this idea will receive any movement any time soon is quite minimal.
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