Younger voters also tended to support abolishing the Electoral College. Presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., at an organizing event in February. There were two additional votes for Sanders that were invalidated in Minnesota and one for Kasich in Colorado. Abolishing the Electoral College would get rid of this confusing process. This is the heart of the problem with the Electoral College. A number of states have signed onto a pact that guarantees their Electoral College votes to the winner of the popular vote, no matter the outcome in their individual states. That is not to say the Electoral College is without its advantages. On September 18, 1969, the U.S. House of Representatives voted by an overwhelming 338 to 70 to send a constitutional amendment to the Senate that would have dismantled the Electoral College,. Every four years, tens of millions of Americans votes magically disappear before the real election for president happens about six weeks after Election Day, when 538 electors convene in state capitals across the country to cast their votes for president. 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. If such an amendment were to pass Congress, defeat in the states is likely. But the Constitution and the courts have allowed the states some leeway to make changes to how their Electoral College representatives are chosen. Blue states give all their electors to the Democrat, no matter how many Republicans voted for their candidate; vice versa in the red states. Stanford University. Back in 1787, when the delegates to the Constitutional Convention were trying to figure out how the President should be chosen, some wanted the Congress to choose, and . If this system were to be abolished, then every vote counted would have the exact same weight in the final tally. . Having a state-based system for electing both houses of Congress should be adequate to that task. As far as the 2016 election is concerned, Hillary Clinton would still be the likely winner if the Electoral College didn't exist. Beto O'Rourke Announces His Run For President In 2020, Moderate Democrats Under Pressure As Party's Left Grabs Attention. Why? We should be talking about other things. 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. Without the Electoral College, big states like California and New York would dominate elections. Some laws simply state that electors must vote for the candidate of the party they represent; others require electors to sign an oath or a pledge. Switching to this standard system would not likely create an adverse result. The only point in this election where the possibility of either of the candidates losing the popular vote but still claiming an electoral victory was on July 30, when a FiveThirtyEight model showed Clinton clinching the popular vote by less than 1 percent, but still losing to Trump by two electoral votes. The places where there are more people become the top priority, especially if there is a chance to swing some votes. By subscribing to this BDG newsletter, you agree to our. In the video above, we delve into the reasons people give for keeping the Electoral College and why theyre wrong. The politicians are tapping into what's become a popular position with many voters, especially Democrats. By Jack Rakove, the William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies and a professor of political science. For almost the first half century of the republic, presidential candidates were chosen by the caucuses of the two parties in the House and the Senate. And the most recent major occasion took place in 1969, 1970, when there was a strong bipartisan effort to abolish the electoral college and have us utilize a national popular vote. 4. Stanford, CA 94305-6105 Today, 48 states use winner-take-all. 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. There are over 300 million people currently residing in the United States, but only 538 people actually get to choose who gets to be the president. This toolkit provides guidance and resources to those associated with community colleges who are interested in either creating a pathway program to law school or enhancing an existing program. So lets put the power to select the president where it actually belongs, in the hands of all the people. The current system is weighted too heavily in favor of celebrity appeal, demagogic displays and appeals to narrow special interests. It causes some votes to have greater weight than others. A few states provide criminal penalties if an elector violates the requirement. Continually updated tools and resources to help move your practice and the legal profession forward during COVID-19 and beyond. It can be fixed. As we can see from questions posed in two respectable polls, Pew and Gallup, in spite of the fact that majorities support change it is Democrats who support it and Republicans who oppose it. But as people moved and the economy changed so did that ratio. Even though proponents of the Electoral College want it to stay so that every state can have a specific say in the outcome of the election, the candidates are already starting to behave in the same ways that people fear they would when targeting a majority population groups. Places like Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan. These Americans, chosen for loyalty to their political party, will vote for the presidential candidate who won their states popular vote. The Electoral College Will Destroy America, The Battleground States Biden and Trump Need to Win 270, free daily writing prompts for remote learning. Democracy is, at its core, about fair, equal representation one person, one vote. Each of those states has Democratic control of the state legislature. So if the results of most presidential elections tend to reflect the choice of the people, why do we still have the Electoral College? 11. It would create problems when multiple candidates run. It is no secret that the administrations of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama all suffered, from the outset, from efforts to imply that there was something improper and unworthy or even suspicious in their elections. When Americans are polled about the Electoral College, most of them say that they want it to disappear. This action would allow the popular vote winner to take the White House. But the Electoral College is worse than merely useless. 3) The Electoral . Our votes would count the same wherever they were cast. And sure, the last two times the Electoral College has awarded the White House to the popular-vote loser, its been to the Republican Donald Trump in 2016 and George W. Bush in 2000. So overall, while the Electoral College may not make much of a difference to the results of our modern elections, it forces our politicians to have a larger scope of the issues facing this country, rather than just focusing on the concerns people in areas with large populations care about. The crisis of 1824 then, represented really the collapse of the old system, and an effort to re-institute it in other terms. But the Constitution and the courts have allowed the states some leeway to make changes to how their Electoral College representatives are chosen. Is the way Americans choose the president undemocratic and unfair? For example, in 1967, 58 percent favored its abolition, while in 1981, 75 percent of . It wasnt the first time a president won by losing or the second or even the fourth. Abolishing the Electoral College seems to be the next logical step in that process. It also means the road to any kind of reform is fraught with political potholes, particularly when the removal of such a system clearly benefits one party at the expense of another. ## For the purposes here, all electoral votes in a given state were awarded to the proper winner, thus attributing faithless electors to the proper candidate. Why? And because they created it, its a sacred work of constitutional genius. 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. "Every vote matters," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., in Mississippi on Monday. In fact, lets tally up all the votes cast for president between 1932 and 2008. It also prevents candidates from going into states where the electorate typically votes for the other party. We need to think hard, and quickly, about how to reform three aspects of the presidential nomination process: the debates, the primary elections and the conventions. The first is easily dismissed. Do you support this movement? Having the person who loses the popular vote win the presidency will seriously undermine the legitimacy of our elections. Changing or eliminating the Electoral College can be accomplished only by an amendment to the Constitution, which requires the consent of two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of the states. The correct number is 102. Electoral vote totals will equal 538. hide caption. Former Rep. Beto O'Rourke said there is a "lot of wisdom" in the idea and Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., also said she's open to it. 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. Our 230-year-old jerry-built system for picking the president, known as the Electoral College. Presidential electors are not more qualified than other citizens to determine who should head the government. The Electoral College thus presents democratic risks without serving any of its original purposes. "How would that work?" According to Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Paper Number 68, the body was a compromise at the. /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. In 2000 Vice President Al Gore won the popular vote against Governor George W. Bush by 543,895. A New Mexico doctor describes the pain and horror of caring for COVID-19 patients. Think about it. The tribalism and mob rule, of which the Founders warned would be realized, and the voices of smaller states would become marginalized. Jacob Levy, of McGill University, disagreed with that argument. We will focus on elections in the 20th and 21st centuries. The great problems with our presidential selection system today stem from the haphazard way we choose the two major party presidential candidates. Under the current system, voters in each state cast their ballots for electors, of which 270 are necessary to win. However, in the five presidential elections of the 21st century, two ended up with the winner of the popular vote losing the Electoral College. 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. 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. Then the 2020 census will be valid for the 2024 and 2028 elections. It causes some votes to have greater weight than others. That system worked well until the two-party system briefly died with the Federalist Party. Third, a national election might provide a cure for the delegitimation of presidential authority that has afflicted the last three presidencies. The reasons for the Electoral College may not be relevant any more. Republicans especially worry about tipping the balance away from their party. But reforming the Electoral College does not rank high among our national problems. What happens if a candidate with electoral votes dies or becomes Find all our Student Opinion questions in this column. Have an idea for a Student Opinion question? In the U.S., 65 percent of adults think whoever wins the popular vote should hold the nation's highest office, according to an Atlantic/PRRI poll last year. Mr. Wegman argues that reforming the Electoral College isnt a partisan issue its a fairness issue. In the current Congress, this would require every Democratic House member to vote in favor of such an amendment and be joined by 59 Republicans and every Democratic Senator to be joined by 19 of their Republican colleagues. Myth No. "It really does over-represent some sparsely populated states, and it provides some skew and bias to our system that I just don't think is healthy anymore," said Paul Gronke, a political scientist at Reed College. Tell us about it. Learn more about how to use our free daily writing prompts for remote learning. But if youre a voter in the United States, theres a really good chance your vote doesnt count the way you think it does. The elected officials of both parties have incentives to choose candidates with an eye toward popular electability and governing skill. I wrote a whole book on the subject. Almost no one would adopt an Electoral College today if we were starting from scratch. Started in the mid-2000s, the NPVIC is a fairly straightforward system that capitalizes on the constitutional guarantee that states are free to determine the manner in which they award their electoral votes. It is the formal body that elects the President and Vice President of the United States. .just the large States - the Cities would end up running the Country. A lot of people dont even want to talk about changing the Electoral College because of this idea. Learn more here. That means more people can feel like their government accurately represents their needs. 2: The founders wanted it this way. Why? Getting rid of the Electoral College would radicalize politics. Thats almost 1.5 billion votes. Theyre swing states. 2. In a polarized political environment, such an institutional structure remains entrenched. Generally, we count on the Republican and Democratic parties to nominate not the best people, but candidates who combine a degree of popular support with the experience and temperament to govern. Which states do matter? 2023 BDG Media, Inc. All rights reserved. However, a constitutional amendment is not the only means by which an alternative to the current Electoral College can be implemented. The group of 16 (as of August 2019) currently control 196 electoral votes together. This is because the president is not . This polling reflects why a constitutional amendment to get rid of the Electoral College will not pass the U.S. Congress any time soon, nor would it have anywhere near the necessary support in state legislatures. The effect is to erase all the voters in that state who didnt vote for the top candidate. Do you agree? Even if all 25 of the states that Mr. Biden won in 2020 were to ratify such an amendment, nine additional states that President Trump won would need to ratify it as well. 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). Why? Maine Department of Administrative and Financial Services, The Electoral College is a ticking time bomb, Its time to abolish the Electoral College, Two cheers for the Electoral College: Reasons not to abolish it, according to the Congressional Research Service, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/10/21/can-the-electoral-college-be-subverted-by-faithless-electors/, Policy lessonsand surprisesfrom the Reimagine Rural podcast, Justice Thomas, gift reporting rules, and what a Supreme Court code of conduct would and wouldnt accomplish, Why is federal spending so hard to cut? Democratic presidential candidates are weighing in too. You may have heard this one in high school. It provides for separate votes for president and vice president and specified that those individuals must be from different states. Students, watch the video and read Mr. Wegmans Op-Ed, and then tell us: What does democracy mean to you? "There's no realistic chance of a Constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College," said Jacob Levy, a professor of political theory at McGill University. In this video excerpt from our Oct. 22 panel, Mr. Wegman argues that states should join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, a plan to guarantee that the candidate who receives the most popular votes across all 50 states and the District of Columbia wins the presidency. The winner-take-all method is nowhere in the Constitution. In winner-take-all states, all electoral votes cast for the state are assigned to the candidate who gets the most electoral votes. Of the 700 attempts to fix or abolish the electoral college, this one nearly succeeded In 1969, Congress almost approved a constitutional amendment to get rid of the electoral college,. It channels presidential politics into a two-party system, which is superior to multiparty systems where fringe factions can exercise too much leverage. As Americans look at their election processes, a complete review of the pros and cons of abolishing the Electoral College is useful when taking this unique structure into account. The Electoral College website now has an easy-to-remember address. Who verifies if a candidate is qualified to run for President? The Electoral College has given one candidate a majority win in this political structure since 1992, but there have been four times when the winner of the election didnt receive a clear majority of the votes across the entire country. As discussed above, the only practical way of ending the Electoral College is by changing the ways in which states use the popular vote to award electors to the presidential candidates. Spend some time moving states into the Biden and Trump circles and make notes about what you notice and wonder. It was replaced by party conventions, which eventually were replaced (almost) with strings of single or multiple state primaries and caucuses. However, it is possible to win the presidency without winning the popular vote. But get this, the way the Electoral College actually functions today isnt even enshrined in the Constitution. The Electoral College is not going to be changed, and there are far more urgent and promising topics for reform of our presidential selection system. Why did President Obama spend so much money bailing out the auto industry? Moreover, the electoral college method preserved the two compromises over representationthe three-fifths clause and the big state-small state compromiseand guarded against a fracturing of votes for many candidates, which they thought might occur once George Washington was no longer available as a nationally respected consensus candidate. Bernie Sanders, John Kasich, Ron Paul, and Faith Spotted Eagle received one each. Adding even more candidates into this discussion without the protections of this structure could create circumstances where someone with less than 35% of the vote could potentially win a four-year term. Do you think that more states or all states should join the compact? This system allows minorities to have a bigger microphone for their concerns as well. Still, the advantages are uncertain and relatively minor. Swing or battleground states are mere accidents of geography. Despite California having millions of more people living in the state compared to Wyoming, the weight of a vote is 30% less. If the Electoral College was eliminated, the power to elect the President would rest solely in the hands of a few of our largest states and cities, greatly diminishing the voice of smaller populated states. On this date, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a constitutional amendment to eliminate the Electoral College and provide for the direct election of the President using the results of the national popular vote. The interests of the minority would no longer receive protection. The compact requires states to pass laws that would award their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote nationally. {{currentYear}} American Bar Association, all rights reserved. Lauren Wesley Wilson Is Making WHCD Weekend More Inclusive, Dylan Mulvaney Wanted To Be An Actor, Not An Activist, Olivia Munn & John Mulaney's Meet Cute 8 Years Ago At A Wedding Is Relatable, 10 Times Tom From 'Succession' Was Actually Mr. Darcy, Get Even More From Bustle Sign Up For The Newsletter. An example of a state closely split by congressional district is Florida in 2016, where Trump won in 14 of them and Clinton won in 13. The amendments Fully overhauling the way the president is selected would take a Constitutional amendment, which would require the votes of two-thirds of. The Constitution provides no express role for the states after appointment of its presidential electors, the 10th Circuit panel said, adding, Once appointed, (electors) are free to vote as they choose.. While there are two different means to amend the founding document, this country has always used the same route: a 2/3rds vote in both houses of Congress, followed by the ratification of 3/4ths of the states. 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. What do you think of Mr. Wegmans arguments? Students 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. Faith in elections, trust in government, and the legitimacy of elected officials and the offices they hold will be challenged by a system that consistently turns its back on the will of the voters. The reason we even have swing states is because almost all states award their electoral votes using a winner-take-all system. It creates 50 individual contests. The threat is the effort to create a so-called . LIASSON: It would take a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College, so that's not going to happen. It gives a slight edge to candidates with broad-based support in many states over those who rack up huge majorities in just a few large states. A plan to scrap the Electoral College via constitutional amendment would not pass in the current environment. Does It Need to Be Fixed? The NPV would effectively abolish the Electoral College and co-opt even those states who did not join the compact into accepting an electoral regime they never agreed to or approved. John Kasich, a Republican, even though Colorado law required electors to cast their votes for state-winner Hillary Clinton, a Democrat. And the reasons people think we need to keep the Electoral College the way it is, theyre all wrong. Your membership has expired - last chance for uninterrupted access to free CLE and other benefits. We already see gridlock and partisanship in Congress that limits the opportunities for collaboration. Why? The electors can vote their conscience as well, refusing to follow what their state elections guide them to do. (John . This process means that each candidate must speak with the entire country instead of visiting the largest cities as a way to solicit for votes. Trump made a similar argument earlier this week, warning that "smaller states & then entire Midwest would end up losing all power.". Today that system is threatened by a proposal called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, or. Its just basic fairness. Abolishing the Electoral College stops swing states from having sway in the election. The distinction matters. The winner of the Electoral College vote is usually the candidate who has won the popular vote. Some of the most important framers, including James Madison and James Wilson, wanted to write a direct popular vote into the Constitution. As the U.S. Government Archives likes to say, the Electoral College is a process, not a place. This structure was placed in the Constitution by the Founding Fathers of the United States as a compromise between having a vote in Congress to elect the President and the election of a candidate by qualified citizens. The Constitution originally stipulated that the top vote-getter chosen by these electors would become president and the individual with the second-most votes would be vice president. Gronke notes, however, that there would be major administrative challenges if the U.S. ever got to the point of switching to a national popular vote. 2016 is on track to be the fifth election in U.S. political history in which the candidate who wins the most votes is not the one elected president -- giving rise to another round of calls to. The pact raises questions of its own for democracy: It creates a situation in which voters in, for example, Colorado, may cast most of their votes for the Democrat in a presidential race but the state might wind up giving its electors to the Republican depending on the national outcome. This reflects how uncommon it is to reach the Oval Office without winning the popular vote; it has only happened four times in United States history. Sixty years later inRay v. Blair, the court ruled the Constitution, including the 12th Amendment, does not bar a political party from requiring electors to sign a pledge to support the nominees of the national convention. Still, Levy said if he had to bet on whether the U.S. will still be using the Electoral College in 20 years he thinks it will. TheNational Archives reportsthat over the past 200 years more than 700 proposals have been introduced in Congress to reform or eliminate the Electoral College without any becoming law. Second, a national popular vote would eliminate the battleground state phenomenon that has now become the key feature of post-convention campaigning, leaving most Americans alienated from the decisive phase of presidential elections. The Electoral College has elected a president who did not win the popular vote twice in the past 20 years, in 2000 and 2016. [1] Only when they sign the certificate of ascertainment and the votes are tallied in the United States Congress is the presidential race officially over. There have been some unusual elections, such as the 1972 affair when Richard Nixon took 520 electoral votes to George McGoverns 16. And this was an effort that was supported by the AFL-CIO, the Chamber of Commerce, the American Bar Association, and progressive and liberal groups outside. Five times in our history, presidential candidates who have won more votes than their opponent have still lost the election. 3. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. President Trump once supported abolishing the Electoral College he previously felt it was a "total disaster for democracy" but since his 2016 presidential victory over Hillary Clinton, in which Clinton won the popular vote by almost 3 million votes, but Trump received 304 electoral votes, he has changed his mind. First, and most obviously, such a system would conform to the dominant democratic value that has prevailed in American politics ever since the one-person, one-vote reapportionment rulings of the early 1960s. These arent small states. The way the Electoral College actually functions today isnt even enshrined in the Constitution. When a state passes legislation to join the National Popular Vote Compact, it compels the state to award its electoral votes to whomever wins the national popular vote, regardless of which candidate won in that state. Stanford, California 94305. Nonetheless, it is likely the most viable alternative to the current Electoral College system. 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. #Marianne2024 . According to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., if the Electoral College of the United States was abolished, the collapse of the already weakened two-party political system would be fast tracked; resulting in multiplication of splinter parties. In the video above, Mr. Wegman argues that the Electoral College is undemocratic. States have the power to award their electors however they like. Under this option, Florida would give 15 Electoral College votes to Clinton and 14 to Trump. A presidential candidate who doesnt receive a majority of the votes can still win the Electoral College to get into the White House. It is extremely difficult to amend the Constitution.

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