A presidential candidate who doesnt receive a majority of the votes can still win the Electoral College to get into the White House. 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. The voices of small states, like Rhode Island and Wyoming, would be drowned out. 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. ), and the big state-small state divide no longer animates our politics, if it ever did. When enough states join in this interstate compact, itll mean that the popular-vote winner will always become president. 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). Whether youre Republican or Democrat, the Electoral College is unfair. In fact, there is already a movement brewing among states to agree to award their electors to whichever candidate wins the national popular vote. [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. But under this system, those Republican votes might as well not exist. Some of the most important framers, including James Madison and James Wilson, wanted to write a direct popular vote into the Constitution. 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. By Jack Rakove, the William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies and a professor of political science. 2? There would need to be a Constitutional amendment if the compact idea doesnt work. Under these laws, which states adopted to gain political advantage in the nations early years, even though it was never raised by the framers states award all their electors to the candidate with the most popular votes in their state. The electors can vote their conscience as well, refusing to follow what their state elections guide them to do. 260, February 19, 2020, p. 9, https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/report/destroying-the-electoral-college-the-anti-federalist-national-popular-0. Instead of a politician trying to appeal to someone with specific needs, the adoption of a general platform that maximizes votes in urban centers would become the emphasis of each party. 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. Our 230-year-old jerry-built system for picking the president, known as the Electoral College. 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. The outcome has prompted some to question whether the Electoral College the body of officials that formally elects the nation's president every four yearsis good for democracy, and even compelled outgoing California Sen. Barbara Boxer to file legislation to abolish the 229-year-old system. 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? 4. Not one was a first-rank president, but their selection did not seriously injure the democratic character of our system. This perception is reinforced by the red- and blue-state imagery that controls our view of the electoral process. But the Electoral College is worse than merely useless. 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. 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. After reading the article and watching the video, what questions do you have for Mr. Wegman? This is one reason why they created checks and balances, including the Electoral College. The correct number is 102. 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. But its worth taking a closer look at arguments in favor of keeping the status quo. 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. "Every vote matters," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., in Mississippi on Monday. 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. Three happened in the 19th century; none in the 20th century and two in the 21st century. 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. **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). If the U.S. were to abolish the electoral college, then the restrictions that territories experience against voting in this election would disappear. The effect is to erase all the voters in that state who didnt vote for the top candidate. Having a state-based system for electing both houses of Congress should be adequate to that task. 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. This is the heart of the problem with the Electoral College. This cant go on. He makes the case that both Republicans and Democrats should support a change. It's called the national popular vote movement, and it's already been passed into law in many states, totaling 196 electoral votesthe states include big ones like California and New York and small ones like Vermont and Hawaii. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/08/learning/is-the-electoral-college-a-problem-does-it-need-to-be-fixed.html. During the 2020 election cycle, there are several candidates who are promising to work on doing just that. 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. 4. 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. Voting By Mail Is On The Rise, But Could Alleged N.C. Election Fraud Change That? Warren Focuses On Policy, Which Looks Like A Tough Sell With Voters, Which Democrats Are Running In 2020 And Which Still Might. Still, the advantages are uncertain and relatively minor. .just the large States - the Cities would end up running the Country. But reforming the Electoral College does not rank high among our national problems. I wrote a whole book on the subject. The basis for the Electoral College is found inArticle II, Section 1of the Constitution, which spells out how the president shall be chosen. 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. The truth is . We will focus on elections in the 20th and 21st centuries. Click the links below for answers to these frequently asked questions. It causes some votes to have greater weight than others. Interestingly, the congressional caucus system is very close to the system the British used to replace Prime Minister David Cameron. 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. There were two additional votes for Sanders that were invalidated in Minnesota and one for Kasich in Colorado. Remember what we said back in Myth No. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. What would happen if the Electoral College was eliminated? Given that a change would require a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress and three-quarters of the state legislatures, it is not going to happen. Hillary Clinton won. That means the major party that can maintain its base could win elections without a clear majority. The state also reelected their Republican governor in 2020. The compact would only go into effect once the number of states involved surpasses the 270 Electoral College vote threshold that is required to win the presidency. Do you think this means the system is broken? Every vote matters, commented Senator Elizabet Warren (D-Mass) in an early campaign stop in Mississippi in 2019, and the way we can make that happen is that we can have national voting and that means get rid of the Electoral College.. 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). 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. That means more people can feel like their government accurately represents their needs. LIASSON: It would take a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College, so that's not going to happen. The chances of a recount would increase dramatically with election. Presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., at an organizing event in February. 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. What do you think of Mr. Wegmans arguments? 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. 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. Under the current structure of the United States, there are 50 unique presidential contests instead of one nationwide affair to elect a President. 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.
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