He makes the case that both Republicans and Democrats should support a change. Could Washington administer a national recount in the event of a close result? What Is the Electoral College? Switching to this standard system would not likely create an adverse result. 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 . "And the way we can make that happen is that we can have national voting and that means get rid of the Electoral College.". For example, in 1967, 58 percent favored its abolition, while in 1981, 75 percent of . ## 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. 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. Its no wonder the candidates fixate on issues that matter to specific groups of voters in swing states, like fracking in Pennsylvania This is my 13th visit. or prescription drug benefits in Florida. 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. 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. **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). 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. Yes. But the Constitution and the courts have allowed the states some leeway to make changes to how their Electoral College representatives are chosen. 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. 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 Constitution is silent on whether states or the electors themselves ultimately can decide which candidate gets the electors vote, and the U.S. Supreme Court has not addressed that issue in the handful of cases it has considered related to the Electoral College. 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. Almost no one would adopt an Electoral College today if we were starting from scratch. The corrosiveness of this system isnt only a modern concern. 7. The winner of an election should be the person who gets the most votes. The great problems with our presidential selection system today stem from the haphazard way we choose the two major party presidential candidates. It is a process that allows the people to choose who serves in the White House instead of throwing it into Congress. Changing or eliminating the Electoral College can be accomplished only by an amendment to the Constitution, which requires the. The effect is to erase all the voters in that state who didnt vote for the top candidate. 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. 2023 BDG Media, Inc. All rights reserved. #Marianne2024 . This is the result of an amazing technological revolution, but what does it have to do with 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. Three happened in the 19th century; none in the 20th century and two in the 21st century. This is clear in polling on the topic. Do you agree? Only one election was so close that it had to go to the House of Representatives, which is how John Quincy Adams won over Andrew Jackson. There is a trigger for NPV to go into effect, and we are creeping ever closer toward it.10 When enough states have entered the compact to reach a majority of the electoral votes270 out of 538the compact will then kick in. Save Our States, The Status of National Popular Vote, https://saveourstates.com/threats/the-status-of-npv (accessed April 17, 2020). John Locher/AP 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? No amount of campaigning will change that. In each case, the number of faithless electors who exercised that behavior would not have had a meaningful impact on the outcome. Electoral vote totals will equal 538. Although there are some advantages to this system, the disadvantages have been highlighted in recent elections. Do you agree with Mr. Wegman that we should change how the Electoral College works to ensure that the popular vote chooses the president? Eliminating this barrier could mean that some parts of the country never become part of the overall campaign. 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,. The effort in Congress to overhaul America's election system followed the contentious 1968 presidential contest. Social change can seem sudden, as if millions awoke one day to the same realization. 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. So what would happen if we got rid of the Electoral College? But specifics vary. Out of those visits, almost 70% of them happened in only four states: North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Instead of dealing with these complications, a simple majority vote would always speak of the will of the people. 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. 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. That fall, former Vice President Richard M. Nixon defeated . 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. But heres the important part. During the 2020 election cycle, there are several candidates who are promising to work on doing just that. What I learned is it doesnt have to be this way. 6. In part, that is because the Electoral College is constitutionally mandated, and abolishing it would require a constitutional amendment. Even when it is against the law for these folks to vote for someone other than what the electoral results in their state indicate, there is always an option to become a faithless elector under the American structure. 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. The current system is weighted too heavily in favor of celebrity appeal, demagogic displays and appeals to narrow special interests. Yet, ratification happens not by popular vote but by state legislature. Click the links below for answers to these frequently asked questions. Jesse Wegman, a member of the New York Times editorial board and author of the book Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College, explains: American democracy isnt just quirky its also unfair. The compact requires states to pass laws that would award their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote nationally. We already see gridlock and partisanship in Congress that limits the opportunities for collaboration. 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. Remember what we said back in Myth No. . Myth No. 7. This action would allow the popular vote winner to take the White House. 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. The reasons for the Electoral College may not be relevant any more. 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. In most cases this should prevent the popular vote loser from becoming president. Currently, 15 states and DC have approved the NPVIC. "The game will be: Be a liberal to the extent I can maximize votes in major urban centers.". Our 230-year-old jerry-built system for picking the president, known as the Electoral College. [2] Both chambers of the New Hampshire legislature are currently controlled by Democrats; however, the 2020 elections shifted both chambers to Republican control. Tell us about it. Learn more about how to use our free daily writing prompts for remote learning. But really, scholars say, consensus is constructed through thousands of small acts over generations. In part, that is because theElectoral Collegeis constitutionally mandated, and abolishing it would require a constitutional amendment. 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. There have also been five elections where the eventual president didnt win a majority of the vote, including Trump in 2016. 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 current structure limits Americans from pushing in this direction even though candidates tend to visit swing states more often. This means that every election, 80 percent of American voters, roughly 100 million people, get ignored. A few states provide criminal penalties if an elector violates the requirement. 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. The party structureswhich, for all their faults, have a vested interest in candidates from the moderate middle who are able to work with Congress and other officials to governhave been sidelined. Support for direct popular election. 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. It would stop the requirement to redistribute the electoral votes. The Electoral College website now has an easy-to-remember address. Enslaved people couldnt vote, but they were still counted toward the slave states representation in Congress. US election 2020. We survived. A New Mexico doctor describes the pain and horror of caring for COVID-19 patients. By subscribing to this BDG newsletter, you agree to our. But explaining exactly how it does this remains a mystery. 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. 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. What are the positive arguments in favor of replacing the existing electoral system with a national popular vote? "Every vote matters," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., in Mississippi on Monday. 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. You may have heard this one in high school. That could have happened even though Biden won the popular vote by 7,060,087 (and counting)a margin even larger than the margins won by George W Bush in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2012. Today the pact has the support of states and Washington D.C. that total 181 electoral votes, largely those that have gone for Democrats in recent years. James Madison, known as the father of the Constitution, was very disturbed by the state winner-take-all rule, which he considered one of the central flaws of the Electoral College as it took shape in the early 19th century. These arent small states. As a result, most are considered safe, that is, comfortably in hand for one party or the other. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/08/learning/is-the-electoral-college-a-problem-does-it-need-to-be-fixed.html. 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. 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. Debate renewed in 2016 after theelectionof the fifth U.S. president who won the presidency despite losing the popular vote. What happens if the President-elect fails to qualify before inauguration? The founders opted for the Electoral College because the two leading alternatives, election by Congress and by popular vote, were thought to have serious defects. Thats not true either. Gronke asks. Polls conducted by Gallup over the past seven decades, with the most recent being from 2013, clearly show the American public's desire to get rid of the whole system. This is just one way the legacy of slavery still taints our politics today. (John . Myth No. For instance, if a hotly contested state like Wisconsin broke for the candidate who lost the popular vote, eight of its ten electoral votes would be added to their tally. 4. Article II, section 1 of the Constitution establishes the Electoral College. As a result, Republicans and Republican state governments are incentivized to maintain the current 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. 2. Abolishing the Electoral College: Since the year 2000, there have been five presidential elections. 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. They disagreed so strongly that the final system wasnt adopted until the last minute, thrown together by a few delegates in a side room. It gives each state in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct electors equal to its representation in Congress. And even when that doesn't happen, Wegman sees another problem with the . Our votes would count the same wherever they were cast. 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. The way the Electoral College actually functions today isnt even enshrined in the Constitution. And this year, who knows? 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. That means there must be a majority of states that agree with a specific candidate instead of allowing the people to decide who they want to have as president. In the video above, we delve into the reasons people give for keeping the Electoral College and why theyre wrong. And because they created it, its a sacred work of constitutional genius. 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. Critics of the system would argue that the elections of Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump are evidence that this impact is no longer present in U.S. politics. 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.. We will focus on elections in the 20th and 21st centuries. Polls from FiveThirtyEight polls-only forecast have predicted Clinton receiving a majority popular vote of 49.7 percent, with Trump behind at 43.3 percent. It doesnt. It would create problems when multiple candidates run. That means the major party that can maintain its base could win elections without a clear majority. That means if you live in a rural area, your vote may count more toward who gets to be the eventual president. After a long battle in Florida Bush won the state narrowly, giving him an Electoral College victory of 271 to 266 over Al Gore. NPV would reshape our political landscape by concentrating power in our largest states and cities. 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. 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. When you know that one state will vote the same way in every election, there is no need to visit that place. 2? 2. 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? In the 20th century there were 25 presidential elections and none of them resulted in an Electoral College winner who lost the popular vote. The group of 16 (as of August 2019) currently control 196 electoral votes together. The amendments Fully overhauling the way the president is selected would take a Constitutional amendment, which would require the votes of two-thirds of. It took time for people to learn what was happening in the nations capital. The places where there are more people become the top priority, especially if there is a chance to swing some votes. Did you know that when Americans vote in the 2020 presidential election, theyre not actually voting for the next president? The system calls for the creation, every four years, of a temporary group of electors equal to the total number of representatives in Congress. Instead, theyre voting for their states representatives in the Electoral College, who will then vote for the president. Parties must obtain no less than 7% of votes - either on their own or in alliance with other parties - in order to enter . Sometimes one party does better for a few election cycles. No other mode of presidential elections would be fully consistent with our underlying commitment to the equality of all citizens. 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. what happened to calum scott brother, youngest taekwondo grandmaster,
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