"The game will be: Be a liberal to the extent I can maximize votes in major urban centers.". It gives each state in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct electors equal to its representation in Congress. Or is it working the way it is supposed to? This year is the poster child for the need for reform. That meant more power for those states under an Electoral College system, and slave states didnt want to give up that power. They want the option to select a president based on who gets the most votes nationally. And thats it. The distinction matters. Thats not true either. Swing or battleground states are mere accidents of geography. 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. It doesnt. Beto O'Rourke Announces His Run For President In 2020, Moderate Democrats Under Pressure As Party's Left Grabs Attention. Today, 48 states use winner-take-all. As a result, most are considered safe, that is, comfortably in hand for one party or the other. This perception is reinforced by the red- and blue-state imagery that controls our view of the electoral process. 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. Over 2.8 million more people voted for Hillary Clinton instead of Donald Trump, but it was Trump who won the White House because of the results of the electoral map. The Electoral College has been the subject of debate since it was first implemented centuries ago, but when George W. Bush won the presidential election in 2000 despite Al Gore winning the popular vote, controversy surrounding the institution rose to a much more intense degree. Myth No. "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. The way the Electoral College actually functions today isnt even enshrined in the Constitution. Stanford, CA 94305-6105 Instead, theyre voting for their states representatives in the Electoral College, who will then vote for the president. This isnt a partisan issue its a fairness issue. In 2016, the results were even more dramatic. This scenario is very different from what happened in 2000 when Gore and Bush were separated by less than 1 percent of the popular vote. Do you think this means the system is broken? 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. It seems to me that the original system may have been superior to what we now have. The general threshold that an election result must reach to trigger an automatic recount is a difference of 0.5% of the vote or less. *** 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. And while Electoral College winning/popular vote losing presidents are formally and technically legitimate holders of the office, the perception that a broken system is anti-democratic and anti-majoritarian can have wide-reaching, penetrating, long-term consequences for the health of a democracy. It's time to renew your membership and keep access to free CLE, valuable publications and more. There can be distinctive advantages to one party in a decade where three election cycles are possible. hide caption. But its logic, its distortion of the democratic process and its underlying flaws will still strongly influence the conduct of the election. While people were moving to the coasts, especially California, the Electoral College stayed the same. 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. Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center 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. But after the presidential election in 1800 resulted in an acrimonious tie vote between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, the12th Amendmentwas ratified in 1804. The only difference is that in this unique structure, the voice of the minority can actually shout down the desires of the majority. 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 interactive diagram The Battleground States Biden and Trump Need to Win 270, you are able to build your own coalition of states to see how either candidate, President Trump or former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., can win the election. Those states do get a boost from their two Senate-based electoral votes, but that benefit pales in comparison to the real culprit: statewide winner-take-all laws. There would need to be a Constitutional amendment if the compact idea doesnt work. As far as the 2016 election is concerned, Hillary Clinton would still be the likely winner if the Electoral College didn't exist. Whether youre Republican or Democrat, your vote probably doesnt count the way it should. It doesnt have to be this way. 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. 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. The politicians are tapping into what's become a popular position with many voters, especially Democrats. Donald Trump was open about ignoring the pleas of the safe blue states like New York when they were suffering the most from the coronavirus pandemic. These imbalances effectively ensure that some votes in presidential elections are worth more than others, and as that imbalance scales up across the entire Electoral College, it can (under the right circumstances) provide the recipes for popular vote winners losing the Electoral College. What Is the Electoral College? By subscribing to this BDG newsletter, you agree to our. Iowa farmers might lose out to California union workers since their population numbers are larger. 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. But reforming the Electoral College does not rank high among our national problems. Why did President Obama spend so much money bailing out the auto industry? Imagine a Florida-style recount in every precinct in America. In the history of the United States, there have been six presidential elections that would have qualified for this issue and three of them have occurred since 1968. There will always be a concern about the tyranny of the majority in the United States. There have been a total of five candidates who have won the popular vote but lost in the Electoral College, with the most recent cases occurring in the 2016 and 2000 . The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. 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. John Kasich, a Republican, even though Colorado law required electors to cast their votes for state-winner Hillary Clinton, a Democrat. There have been some unusual elections, such as the 1972 affair when Richard Nixon took 520 electoral votes to George McGoverns 16. It probably reduces the cost of presidential campaigns by confining television advertising to the battleground states (and spares the rest of us the tedium of endless repetitive ads). After reading the article and watching the video, what questions do you have for Mr. Wegman? After a long battle in Florida Bush won the state narrowly, giving him an Electoral College victory of 271 to 266 over Al Gore. When enough states join in this interstate compact, itll mean that the popular-vote winner will always become president. But in the end, Republicans and Democrats are virtually tied. 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. It is a process that allows the people to choose who serves in the White House instead of throwing it into Congress. That means more people can feel like their government accurately represents their needs. 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. Source: Daily Kos Elections. In the Electoral College, there are 51 voting jurisdiction (states) that includes D.C. Parties must obtain no less than 7% of votes - either on their own or in alliance with other parties - in order to enter . It also stops the distribution process where California gets 55 votes, but a state like Delaware only gets 3. Having an election in which victory went to a candidate carrying a single national constituency might not wholly cure this problem, but it might well work to mitigate it. Presidential elections have little if anything to do with the subject, even when some candidates claim to be running against Washington.. This process stopped the process that was used in England to select a Prime Minister. Do you agree? 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. The winner-take-all method is nowhere in the Constitution. "You look at the Florida situation we had in 2000 that already took a lot of time and effort, but imagine if that was done across the country. 1. However, it is possible to win the presidency without winning the popular vote. Using bots can streamline some law firm work, American Bar Association The great problems with our presidential selection system today stem from the haphazard way we choose the two major party presidential candidates. And this year, who knows? The current structure limits Americans from pushing in this direction even though candidates tend to visit swing states more often. If a candidate wins the popular vote in a state, even by a single vote, they get all of that states electoral votes. 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. But dont forget, Bush won the popular vote four years later by three million votes. Electoral vote totals will equal 538. We should be talking about other things. The first is easily dismissed. A presidential candidate who doesnt receive a majority of the votes can still win the Electoral College to get into the White House. The threat is the effort to create a so-called . That means centrist ideas tend to be the ones that receive the most traction instead of the individual priorities of platforms on the extreme left or right. That is not to say the Electoral College is without its advantages. .just the large States - the Cities would end up running the Country. There have been three: John Quincy Adams, Benjamin Harrison and George W. Bush. In winner-take-all states, all electoral votes cast for the state are assigned to the candidate who gets the most electoral votes. 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. 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. In most cases this should prevent the popular vote loser from becoming president. 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. 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 . These arent small states. 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. 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. 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. Without the Electoral College in place, presidential candidates would build platforms that would speak to their base. The group of 16 (as of August 2019) currently control 196 electoral votes together. 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. It would create problems when multiple candidates run. Myth No. # 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. Source: Daily Kos Elections. 6. Next week five hundred and thirty-eight American citizens will travel to their state capitals and elect the president of the United States. 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. That fall, former Vice President Richard M. Nixon defeated . Were already letting women, former slaves, and 18-year-olds vote, changing the structure of the election since the countrys founding. The reasons for the Electoral College may not be relevant any more. (John . Places like Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan. In his video, Mr. Wegman offers counterarguments to what he calls myths about the Electoral College. 11. Almost no one would adopt an Electoral College today if we were starting from scratch. Our 230-year-old jerry-built system for picking the president, known as the Electoral College. **Here, we treat the District of Columbia as a single congressional district (as the 23rd Amendment to the Constitution does for the purposes of the Electoral College). All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public. Tell us about it. Learn more about how to use our free daily writing prompts for remote learning. The Electoral College has elected a president who did not win the popular vote twice in the past 20 years, in 2000 and 2016. Well, American democracy operates on a whole collection of cherished ideas and practices, but our system also includes some dusty old artifacts from its founding two centuries ago. A New Mexico doctor describes the pain and horror of caring for COVID-19 patients. If the Electoral College system begins to prevent, on a regular basis, the popular vote winner from becoming president, it will create systemic challenges. Each of those states has Democratic control of the state legislature. They are simply party loyalists who do not deliberate about anything more than where to eat lunch. 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. Take the Electoral College, Americas system for picking the president. The small towns in the United States, along with all of the rural areas, would become marginalized if this system were to be entirely abolished. 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. But under this system, those Republican votes might as well not exist. In part, that is because theElectoral Collegeis constitutionally mandated, and abolishing it would require a constitutional amendment. These Americans, chosen for loyalty to their political party, will vote for the presidential candidate who won their states popular vote. If, say, environmental sustainability or abortion or the Second Amendment is your dominant concern, it does not matter whether you live in Wyoming or California, Pennsylvania or Delaware. 5. 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. 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. The only states that matter to either party are the battleground states especially bigger ones like Florida and Pennsylvania, where a swing of a few thousand or even a few hundred votes can shift the entire pot of electors from one candidate to the other. The reason we even have swing states is because almost all states award their electoral votes using a winner-take-all system. 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. Its primary function is to malapportion political power, and it does so indeed, has always done so with strikingly awful. But the Constitution and the courts have allowed the states some leeway to make changes to how their Electoral College representatives are chosen. How the Electoral College helps preserve our constitutional system. Do you agree with him that the winner-take-all system that most states use for the Electoral College is undemocratic and unfair? That might invite legal challenges from candidates or voters' groups if it took place. But the Constitution and the courts have allowed the states some leeway to make changes to how their Electoral College representatives are chosen. 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. First, there's the Constitutional problem. Maine and Nebraska, however, have enacted the congressional district method, which allocates one electoral vote to the winner of the popular vote in each state-drawn district. 10. From hair trends to relationship advice, our daily newsletter has everything you need to sound like a person whos on TikTok, even if you arent. Although there are some advantages to this system, the disadvantages have been highlighted in recent elections. The main problem with the Electoral College today is not, as both its supporters and detractors believe, the disproportionate power it gives smaller states. ** Adjusted Maine to act as one state rather than separate EV districts. 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. Why? The 2010 census is therefore valid for the 2012, 2016, and 2020 Presidential elections. Not this year. 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. The current system for electing a U.S. president traces back to 1787. 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. And so each Electoral College vote in a small state like Delaware or Wyoming is worth more than an Electoral College vote in a big state like California. Learn more here. But its worth taking a closer look at arguments in favor of keeping the status quo. Editors Note: In 2016, we asked two professors to debate whether the Electoral College should cease to be the mechanism used for selecting the U.S. president. Four of the electors came from the state of Washington. The tribalism and mob rule, of which the Founders warned would be realized, and the voices of smaller states would become marginalized. Its complicated, outdated, unrepresentative in a word, undemocratic. But the real interests of small-state voters are never determined by the relative size of the population of their states. In the video above, Mr. Wegman argues that the Electoral College is undemocratic. 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. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. What happens if the President-elect fails to qualify before inauguration? Maintaining the Electoral College may seem like the most politically expedient position for the Republican Party in the short term, but it may cause significant damage in the long term. In part, that is because the Electoral College is constitutionally mandated, and abolishing it would require a constitutional amendment. Here are the yea and the nay. The founders fought like cats and dogs over how the president should be chosen. In his recent Op-Ed The Electoral College Will Destroy America, Mr. Wegman provides further evidence to support his claim that the Electoral College is unfair: The Electoral College as it functions today is the most glaring reminder of many that our democracy is not fair, not equal and not representative. 260, February 19, 2020, p. 9, https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/report/destroying-the-electoral-college-the-anti-federalist-national-popular-0. For example, in 1967, 58 percent favored its abolition, while in 1981, 75 percent of . 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). In 1892, the court upheld inMcPherson v. Blackerthat Congress can set the date nationally for the Electoral College to meet, but it also said that the states could determine how electors were apportioned and chosen. Every vote would count equally instead. 4. Presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., at an organizing event in February. This design promotes the two-party system. They do not matter because they have any special civic characteristics. The compact requires states to pass laws that would award their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote nationally. The following table shows how this would have changed the outcome in the two contested elections of the 21st century and includes 2004 for comparison. 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. 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). It no longer serves the intended job. Save Our States, The Status of National Popular Vote, https://saveourstates.com/threats/the-status-of-npv (accessed April 17, 2020). Most states have a winner-take-all system that awards all the votes of a states electors to the presidential candidate who obtains the most votes in that state. However, a constitutional amendment is not the only means by which an alternative to the current Electoral College can be implemented. 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. Under the current plan, states that join will not activate the compact until enough states have joined to total 270 electoral votes. The Electoral College consists of an elector selection, a group of people who will meet and vote for President and Vice President based on the results of their states election. Smaller States & the entire Midwest would end up losing all power - & we cant let that happen. Not one was a first-rank president, but their selection did not seriously injure the democratic character of our system. This spring, numerous candidates for president expressed support for either abolishing or changing the Electoral College, which ultimately picks the U.S. president. 3) The Electoral . It channels presidential politics into a two-party system, which is superior to multiparty systems where fringe factions can exercise too much leverage. Plenty. 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. 6. Researchby the National Association of Secretaries of State shows that 29 states and the District of Columbia require presidential electors, chosen through political party processes in each state, to cast their vote for the candidate they were selected by popular vote in that state to represent. In the history of the United States, there have been five elections where the eventual winner didnt receive a clear majority of the vote. The Electoral College is outlined in Article II, Section 1, of the U.S. Constitution. Having a state-based system for electing both houses of Congress should be adequate to that task. No other mode of presidential elections would be fully consistent with our underlying commitment to the equality of all citizens. 7. Theyre swing 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. Five times in our history, presidential candidates who have won more votes than their opponent have still lost the election. That means that the national winner would start out with 102 Electoral College votes. Your membership has expired - last chance for uninterrupted access to free CLE and other benefits. 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 other words, the Electoral College isnt sacred, and theres no reason we cant change how it works today. The presidential election is held every four years on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. He disliked the practice so much he called for a constitutional amendment barring it. It can be fixed. You may have heard this one in high school. But explaining exactly how it does this remains a mystery. Nonetheless, it is likely the most viable alternative to the current Electoral College system. Make sure to update your bookmarks!
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