No amount of campaigning will change that. Do you agree? Switching to this standard system would not likely create an adverse result. 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.". Instead of dealing with these complications, a simple majority vote would always speak of the will of the people. But explaining exactly how it does this remains a mystery. Article V sets up the manner by which an amendment is passed. And this year, who knows? As we all know only too well, in practice this archaic system means that the person who wins the most votes may not win the election. [2] The compact would then be 43 Electoral College votes short of going into effect. Yet, ratification happens not by popular vote but by state legislature. 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. 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. 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. Bill Clinton won the White House in 1992 with only 43% of the vote, and then in 1996 with 49.2%. But dont forget, Bush won the popular vote four years later by three million votes. 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. [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. 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. A supporter of President-elect Joe Biden holds up his cellphone to display the electoral college map, outside the Philadelphia Convention Center on Nov. 7. By Michael W. McConnell, the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law, director of the Constitutional Law Center and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Britannicas ProCon.org lists three reasons: 1) The founding fathers thought the Electoral College was the best method for electing the president.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.3) The Electoral College guarantees certainty, whereas a popular vote system might lead to no candidate getting a majority. The chances of a recount would increase dramatically with election. But under this system, those Republican votes might as well not exist. It also prevents candidates from going into states where the electorate typically votes for the other party. #Marianne2024 . Currently, 15 states and DC have approved the NPVIC. In this case, 19 state legislatures are currently controlled solely by Democrats. And yet we have generally accepted it for centuries on the assumption it serves an important purpose. Next week five hundred and thirty-eight American citizens will travel to their state capitals and elect the president of the United States. Myth No. The founders fought like cats and dogs over how the president should be chosen. The 2010 census is therefore valid for the 2012, 2016, and 2020 Presidential elections. If you submit a question as a comment on this article, we might use it during the live event. Alexander Hamilton was a significant supporter of the Electoral College. ** Adjusted Maine to act as one state rather than separate EV districts. 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. The main problem with the Electoral College today is not, as both its supporters and detractors believe, the disproportionate power it gives smaller states. 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. Because Donald Trump lost to Hillary Clinton in the popular vote, yet was the clear victor in the ultimately definitive electoral college, the strange, disproportionate nature of electoral. Electoral vote totals will equal 538. Alternative 1: Two electoral votes to national popular vote winner; state winner-take-all for the remainder, *Each of these races included faithless electors, such that the total of electoral votes, as shown, does not equal 538. 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. After reading the article and watching the video, what questions do you have for Mr. Wegman? Whether youre Republican or Democrat, your vote probably doesnt count the way it should. 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,. The first is easily dismissed. The current system for electing a U.S. president traces back to 1787. It is extremely difficult to amend the Constitution. 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. In a polarized political environment, such an institutional structure remains entrenched. Students, watch the video and read Mr. Wegmans Op-Ed, and then tell us: What does democracy mean to you? It would create problems when multiple candidates run. In the Electoral College, there are 51 voting jurisdiction (states) that includes D.C. 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 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. Your membership has expired - last chance for uninterrupted access to free CLE and other benefits. This process stopped the process that was used in England to select a Prime Minister. RT @Valkary: THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE SHOULD BE ABSOLVED AND ABOLISHED. 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. hide caption. Still, the advantages are uncertain and relatively minor. The voices of small states, like Rhode Island and Wyoming, would be drowned out. Third, defenders of the Electoral College also claim that it supports the underlying value of federalism. In the video above, we delve into the reasons people give for keeping the Electoral College and why theyre wrong. A split of electoral votes has occurred once in each of these states. So, let me make the case for its abolition and its replacement by a simple national popular vote, to be held in an entity we will call (what the heck) the United States of America. But if youre a voter in the United States, theres a really good chance your vote doesnt count the way you think it does. Supporters of a national popular vote argue something must be done; the Electoral College disproportionately inflates the influence of rural areas while undervaluing the votes of cities. 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. The Electoral College is outlined in Article II, Section 1, of the U.S. Constitution. 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. 4. What Is the Electoral College? In 2016, the results were even more dramatic. Its just basic fairness. In late September, when the Republican nominee's numbers in the polls saw a significant rise and nearly eliminated Clinton's huge post-convention lead, forecasts still had her snatching the election with 17 more electoral votes than her opponent. 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 size of a state does not affect our real political preferences, even though the Electoral College system imagines that it does. 260, February 19, 2020, p. 9, https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/report/destroying-the-electoral-college-the-anti-federalist-national-popular-0. 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. The Electoral College has elected a president who did not win the popular vote twice in the past 20 years, in 2000 and 2016. But reforming the Electoral College does not rank high among our national problems. Students 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. In his video, Mr. Wegman offers counterarguments to what he calls myths about the Electoral College. The places where there are more people become the top priority, especially if there is a chance to swing some votes. The winner of the Electoral College vote is usually the candidate who has won the popular vote. An amendment hasn't been adopted since the 27th, in 1992, and one hasn't been adopted relatively quickly since the 26th, which took 100 days from proposal to adoption in 1971. 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. Not this year. The political game in the United States would change dramatically without the Electoral College present. 7. So it's possible for a candidate to win more votes overall across the country than a rival but not be inaugurated because of insufficient support from the Electoral College: a scenario that has occurred twice in the past two decades. The pros and cons of abolishing the Electoral College must go beyond the 65% of people who want it gone. 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. 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. So what would happen if we got rid of the Electoral College? 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. Could Washington administer a national recount in the event of a close result? 2023 BDG Media, Inc. All rights reserved. The great problems with our presidential selection system today stem from the haphazard way we choose the two major party presidential candidates. In 2016, the results were even more dramatic. 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. This has happened five times in American history. This is clear in polling on the topic. Interestingly, the congressional caucus system is very close to the system the British used to replace Prime Minister David Cameron. First, there's the Constitutional problem. Two hundred years after James Madisons letter, the state winner-take-all rule is still crippling our politics and artificially dividing us. 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. Do they outweigh the arguments that Mr. Wegman presents? Under the current structure of the United States, there are 50 unique presidential contests instead of one nationwide affair to elect a President. Article II, section 1 of the Constitution establishes the Electoral College. Why? There have been three: John Quincy Adams, Benjamin Harrison and George W. Bush. The tribalism and mob rule, of which the Founders warned would be realized, and the voices of smaller states would become marginalized. Swing or battleground states are mere accidents of geography. 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.. The corrosiveness of this system isnt only a modern concern. 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. Anyone can read what you share. Thanks to the Internet, telephones, email, social media, and every other form of communication that we have today, people can choose for themselves whether a new story has an underlying sinister bias. Even though some Americans dont like the gridlock that a two-party system creates, the electoral college keeps this design healthy with each 4-year cycle. 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. Did you know that when Americans vote in the 2020 presidential election, theyre not actually voting for the next president? That meant more power for those states under an Electoral College system, and slave states didnt want to give up that power. Do you think any of these arguments, or others, are convincing reasons for preserving the Electoral College as it stands now? There have been some unusual elections, such as the 1972 affair when Richard Nixon took 520 electoral votes to George McGoverns 16. 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. Stanford University. Do you agree with him that the winner-take-all system that most states use for the Electoral College is undemocratic and unfair? It should be noted, there is debate about the permissibility of such a proposal and its going into effect would likely face a flurry of lawsuits. Around six-in-ten U.S. adults (63%) say the way the president is elected should be changed so that the winner of the popular vote nationwide wins the presidency, while 35% favor keeping the current Electoral College system, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted June 27-July 4, 2022. These Americans, chosen for loyalty to their political party, will vote for the presidential candidate who won their states popular vote. 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. Source: Daily Kos Elections. Thats almost 1.5 billion votes. And it confines vote-counting disputes to just one, or maybe a few, states. However, a constitutional amendment is not the only means by which an alternative to the current Electoral College can be implemented. Hamilton believed that it would prevent the Office of the President from falling into the lot of a person who was not endowed with the requisite qualifications to serve the American people. The two-party system solves the fractured vote problem more effectively than the Electoral College ever did, and the electors never exercised genuine independence. 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. (John . {{currentYear}} American Bar Association, all rights reserved. Today about 1.3% of those employed in the United States work directly in agriculture, and they manage to feed the entire country and beyond. Because the Electoral College is based on the structure of state populations and representation in the House, some people have a vote that carries more weight per delegate than others. Thats because, regardless of its overall merits, change is always rooted in the politics of the day. By Jack Rakove, the William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies and a professor of political science. **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). 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 is the formal body that elects the President and Vice President of the United States. They do not matter because they have any special civic characteristics. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. If the remaining states with Democratic control of the legislature (Maine, Nevada, and Virginia) were to sign on, it would add an additional 23 Electoral College votes. 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. The compact requires states to pass laws that would award their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote nationally. In part, that is because theElectoral Collegeis constitutionally mandated, and abolishing it would require a constitutional amendment. 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. Abolishing the Electoral College stops swing states from having sway in the election. Were already letting women, former slaves, and 18-year-olds vote, changing the structure of the election since the countrys founding. It also stops the distribution process where California gets 55 votes, but a state like Delaware only gets 3. Remember what we said back in Myth No. Think about it. Each of those states has Democratic control of the state legislature. If the Electoral College system begins to prevent, on a regular basis, the popular vote winner from becoming president, it will create systemic challenges. This year is the poster child for the need for reform. Nebraska and Maine already award some of their electors to the winners of the congressional districts. *** 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 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. List of the Pros of Abolishing the Electoral College 1. It doesnt. 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. Continually updated tools and resources to help move your practice and the legal profession forward during COVID-19 and beyond. Imagine a Florida-style recount in every precinct in America. Under the current plan, states that join will not activate the compact until enough states have joined to total 270 electoral votes. It's time to renew your membership and keep access to free CLE, valuable publications and more. The elected officials of both parties have incentives to choose candidates with an eye toward popular electability and governing skill. And thats it. 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. Technically, it is . Why? It is within a states authority under Article II, Section 1 to impose a fine on electors for failing to uphold their pledge, the court said in an 8-1 opinion. Americas auto industry auto industry auto industry At least in part because its located mostly in swing states, like Michigan and Ohio, states whose electoral votes he needed to win. When enough states join in this interstate compact, itll mean that the popular-vote winner will always become president. A few states provide criminal penalties if an elector violates the requirement. 5. 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. That probably promotes a more national and less regional vision. Presidential electors are not more qualified than other citizens to determine who should head the government. Find all our Student Opinion questions in this column. Have an idea for a Student Opinion question? It doesnt have to be this way. 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. "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. Electoral vote totals will equal 538.
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