The effort in Congress to overhaul America's election system followed the contentious 1968 presidential contest. 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. 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. All parts of the country would not be involved in the selection of the president. The reason we even have swing states is because almost all states award their electoral votes using a winner-take-all system. 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. That means the information receives an update every 10 years. It's another way the system ensures it's perpetuity. These Americans, chosen for loyalty to their political party, will vote for the presidential candidate who won their states popular vote. As a result, most are considered safe, that is, comfortably in hand for one party or the other. What I learned is it doesnt have to be this way. Its primary function is to malapportion political power, and it does so indeed, has always done so with strikingly awful. 3. Here, again, there are three main points to make. 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. But as people moved and the economy changed so did that ratio. That meant more power for those states under an Electoral College system, and slave states didnt want to give up that power. Abolishing the Electoral College: Since the year 2000, there have been five presidential elections. Thats almost 1.5 billion votes. The US presidential election takes place 3 November. It causes some votes to have greater weight than others. 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. Save Our States, The Status of National Popular Vote, https://saveourstates.com/threats/the-status-of-npv (accessed April 17, 2020). 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. It would only come into effect when it could guarantee that outcome. The three-fifths clause became irrelevant with the end of slavery (thankfully! Beto O'Rourke Announces His Run For President In 2020, Moderate Democrats Under Pressure As Party's Left Grabs Attention. No other mode of presidential elections would be fully consistent with our underlying commitment to the equality of all citizens. 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. It can be fixed. A second argument holds less populous states deserve the further electoral weight they gain through the senatorial bump giving each state two electors, because their minority status entitles them to additional political protection. Why? That means if you live in a rural area, your vote may count more toward who gets to be the eventual president. Do you agree with him that the winner-take-all system that most states use for the Electoral College is undemocratic and unfair? Bernie Sanders, John Kasich, Ron Paul, and Faith Spotted Eagle received one each. Its just basic fairness. #Marianne2024 . Its complicated, outdated, unrepresentative in a word, undemocratic. Under the current plan, states that join will not activate the compact until enough states have joined to total 270 electoral votes. 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. Gronke asks. Places like Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan. Erdogan's 'polar opposite' wants to replace him as president of Turkey. 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. Presidential electors are not more qualified than other citizens to determine who should head the government. 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 main problem with the Electoral College today is not, as both its supporters and detractors believe, the disproportionate power it gives smaller states. 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. Now is the time for sober and spirited citizens from both parties to devise a new system for 2020. 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. A presidential candidate who doesnt receive a majority of the votes can still win the Electoral College to get into the White House. 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. Two hundred years after James Madisons letter, the state winner-take-all rule is still crippling our politics and artificially dividing us. Find all our Student Opinion questions in this column. Have an idea for a Student Opinion question? What do you think of Mr. Wegmans arguments? Source: Daily Kos Elections. 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. But explaining exactly how it does this remains a mystery. So if the results of most presidential elections tend to reflect the choice of the people, why do we still have the Electoral College? This is just one way the legacy of slavery still taints our politics today. Throughout history there have been over 700 attempts to reform or abolish the Electoral College, according to the Congressional Research Service. Does this interactive influence how you feel about the Electoral College? Including prescription drug benefits and all seniors at every income level. But they spend almost no time talking about issues that matter to millions of voters elsewhere, like public transportation in New York or climate change in California. 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. But explaining exactly how it does this remains a mystery. .just the large States - the Cities would end up running the Country. In addition to the NPVIC discussed above, there are two variations on this theme that could reduce the odds that someone could win the presidency without winning the national popular vote. https://saveourstates.com/threats/the-status-of-npv, https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/report/destroying-the-electoral-college-the-anti-federalist-national-popular-0. If the U.S. were to abolish the electoral college, then the restrictions that territories experience against voting in this election would disappear. 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. This means that every election, 80 percent of American voters, roughly 100 million people, get ignored. The chances of a recount would increase dramatically with election. Presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., at an organizing event in February. 260, February 19, 2020, p. 9, https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/report/destroying-the-electoral-college-the-anti-federalist-national-popular-0. The correct number is 102. 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. Stanford University. We survived. Such an effort would likely receive little or no Republican support. And finally, Myth 3: The Electoral College protects small states. If that occurs, the court might provide states additional guidance on just how much leeway they have to impact the Electoral College vote that decides the presidency of the United States. Whether youre Republican or Democrat, the Electoral College is unfair. Polls from FiveThirtyEight polls-only forecast have predicted. That means the major party that can maintain its base could win elections without a clear majority. 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. Why did they lose? 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren calls for abolishing the Electoral College and moving to a national popular vote: Every vote matters #WarrenTownHall https://t.co/pPFMVywETf pic.twitter.com/yy0J0HgAjc. That position, shared by many Republicans, makes it highly unlikely that there would be sufficient support for changing the system. This year is the poster child for the need for reform. Theyre swing states. When you know that one state will vote the same way in every election, there is no need to visit that place. There have been three: John Quincy Adams, Benjamin Harrison and George W. Bush. 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. 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. 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. Who verifies if a candidate is qualified to run for President? If this system were to be abolished, then every vote counted would have the exact same weight in the final tally. It would create problems when multiple candidates run. 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. And because they created it, its a sacred work of constitutional genius. You may have heard this one in high school. By subscribing to this BDG newsletter, you agree to our. Next week five hundred and thirty-eight American citizens will travel to their state capitals and elect the president of the United States. 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. 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. This has happened five times in American history. 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. In fact, lets tally up all the votes cast for president between 1932 and 2008. In each case, the number of faithless electors who exercised that behavior would not have had a meaningful impact on the outcome. 3. Here are the yea and the nay. It doesnt have to be this way. ), and the big state-small state divide no longer animates our politics, if it ever did. 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.