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Why? Spend some time moving states into the Biden and Trump circles and make notes about what you notice and wonder. In the 20th century there were 25 presidential elections and none of them resulted in an Electoral College winner who lost the popular vote. That means the information receives an update every 10 years. Iowa farmers might lose out to California union workers since their population numbers are larger. **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). That fall, former Vice President Richard M. Nixon defeated . Mr. Wegman argues that reforming the Electoral College isnt a partisan issue its a fairness issue. 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. There would need to be a Constitutional amendment if the compact idea doesnt work. To understand why, lets start from the point we make above: the Electoral College system currently benefits Republicans, as two Republican presidents in the last 20 years have been elected despite losing the popular vote and that nearly happened a third time this year. 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. What are the positive arguments in favor of replacing the existing electoral system with a national popular vote? 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. It creates 50 individual contests. Its just basic fairness. Why did President Obama spend so much money bailing out the auto industry? Tell us about it. Learn more about how to use our free daily writing prompts for remote learning. hide caption. 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. 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. The truth is . 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. Younger voters also tended to support abolishing the Electoral College. 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. Presidential electors are not more qualified than other citizens to determine who should head the government. And this year, who knows? He makes the case that both Republicans and Democrats should support a change. "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. The places where there are more people become the top priority, especially if there is a chance to swing some votes. Instead of dealing with these complications, a simple majority vote would always speak of the will of the people. Here, again, there are three main points to make. How the Electoral College helps preserve our constitutional system. 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. 2? 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. When you know that one state will vote the same way in every election, there is no need to visit that place. The group of 16 (as of August 2019) currently control 196 electoral votes together. RT @Valkary: THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE SHOULD BE ABSOLVED AND ABOLISHED. This is because the president is not . Which states do matter? By subscribing to this BDG newsletter, you agree to our. 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. 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. Thrown together at the last minute by the countrys founders, it almost immediately stopped functioning as they thought it would. 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. Abolishing the Electoral College: Since the year 2000, there have been five presidential elections. 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 . Throughout history there have been over 700 attempts to reform or abolish the Electoral College, according to the Congressional Research Service. 260, February 19, 2020, p. 9, https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/report/destroying-the-electoral-college-the-anti-federalist-national-popular-0. The following table shows how this would have changed the outcome in two contested elections of the 21st century, and how a third would have remained the same. 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. 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. 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. 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. No amount of campaigning will change that. The pros and cons of abolishing the Electoral College must go beyond the 65% of people who want it gone. Popular vote is a direct vote. As a result, Republicans and Republican state governments are incentivized to maintain the current system. Recurring debt ceiling fights will only be solved by budget reform, Amend the Constitution so the candidate who receives the most votes wins. The Electoral College is outlined in Article II, Section 1, of the U.S. Constitution. Changing or eliminating the Electoral College can be accomplished only by an amendment to the Constitution, which requires the. Presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., at an organizing event in February. Nebraska and Maine already award some of their electors to the winners of the congressional districts. The winner of an election should be the person who gets the most votes. It is the formal body that elects the President and Vice President of the United States. But its worth taking a closer look at arguments in favor of keeping the status quo. Warren says she wants to get rid of the Electoral College, and vote for president using a national popular vote. Despite California having millions of more people living in the state compared to Wyoming, the weight of a vote is 30% less. 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. 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. 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. That, critics say, means devaluing the votes of many non-white voters too. In each case, the number of faithless electors who exercised that behavior would not have had a meaningful impact on the outcome. Think about it. There will always be a concern about the tyranny of the majority in the United States. That might invite legal challenges from candidates or voters' groups if it took place. 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. A Constitutional Amendment to Abolish the Electoral College 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. .just the large States - the Cities would end up running the Country. When the Founding Fathers built the idea of the Electoral College into the structure of the American government, their idea of information management was very different than what we have today. As far as the 2016 election is concerned, Hillary Clinton would still be the likely winner if the Electoral College didn't exist. Switching to this standard system would not likely create an adverse result. Places like Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan. Is the Electoral College a Problem? Does It Need to Be Fixed? Bernie Sanders, John Kasich, Ron Paul, and Faith Spotted Eagle received one each. 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,. Despite what you may have learned in school, it was not the product of careful design by brilliant men. 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. Enslaved people couldnt vote, but they were still counted toward the slave states representation in Congress. We have an Electoral College because thats what the founders added to the Constitution at the last minute. 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. Opinion | Will the Economy Make or Break Biden in 2024? [1] Over the years some of them, so-called faithless electors, have deviated from this norm but in 29 states and the District of Colombia state laws exist which bind the electors to vote for the winner of the popular vote. Such an effort would likely receive little or no Republican support. Lauren Wesley Wilson Is Making WHCD Weekend More Inclusive, Dylan Mulvaney Wanted To Be An Actor, Not An Activist, Olivia Munn & John Mulaney's Meet Cute 8 Years Ago At A Wedding Is Relatable, 10 Times Tom From 'Succession' Was Actually Mr. Darcy, Get Even More From Bustle Sign Up For The Newsletter. It channels presidential politics into a two-party system, which is superior to multiparty systems where fringe factions can exercise too much leverage. The two-party system solves the fractured vote problem more effectively than the Electoral College ever did, and the electors never exercised genuine independence. 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. If you submit a question as a comment on this article, we might use it during the live event. That means the major party that can maintain its base could win elections without a clear majority. Five times in our history, presidential candidates who have won more votes than their opponent have still lost the election. 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. The only difference is that in this unique structure, the voice of the minority can actually shout down the desires of the majority. It can be fixed. The winner-take-all method is nowhere in the Constitution. "The game will not be any longer to be a [politician who is] liberal but be able to appeal to a rural Ohioan," he said. 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. 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. How the Electoral College Was Nearly Abolished in 1970 - History