It is extremely difficult to amend the Constitution. "Precisely what it does is proportionately advantages where the people are," Levy said. For years, a majority of Americans have opposed the Electoral College. 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. 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. Click the links below for answers to these frequently asked questions. If you live in a state where youre in the political minority, your vote is effectively erased. 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. But the fact is that we are now one country, whereas in 1789 we were 13 colonies desperately trying to hold onto some semblance of their independencehence a political deal was struck that now threatens the very democracy for which they were trying to create a lasting framework. [2] The compact would then be 43 Electoral College votes short of going into effect. Theyre swing states. This is the heart of the problem with the Electoral College. 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. The Electoral College website now has an easy-to-remember address. 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. They do not matter because they have any special civic characteristics. Its complicated, outdated, unrepresentative in a word, undemocratic. It would create problems when multiple candidates run. Despite political challenges to reforming the manner in which the United States selects its president, there is danger in maintaining the status quo. In May, the Washington State Supreme Courtuphelda state election law that said an elector who did not vote for the candidate he pledged to support could be fined up to $1,000 in civil penalties. 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. Erdogan's 'polar opposite' wants to replace him as president of Turkey. Nonetheless, it is likely the most viable alternative to the current Electoral College system. But the Constitution and the courts have allowed the states some leeway to make changes to how their Electoral College representatives are chosen. But as people moved and the economy changed so did that ratio. 7. Researchby the National Association of Secretaries of State shows that 29 states and the District of Columbia require presidential electors, chosen through political party processes in each state, to cast their vote for the candidate they were selected by popular vote in that state to represent. And while the founding fathers implemented this voting process as a way to "preserve the sense of the people" in other words, to go against the popular vote's wishes if the elite few chosen to be electors felt that the winner was unqualified or unfit most states now abide by a "winner-takes-all" method of distributing votes that renders the original purpose moot. That, critics say, means devaluing the votes of many non-white voters too. But the court has not tackled to what extent states can enforce such a pledge. This issue exists in the Electoral College when the rural states face off with the urban ones. Source: Daily Kos Elections. First, there's the Constitutional problem. This year is the poster child for the need for reform. Without the Electoral College in place, presidential candidates would build platforms that would speak to their base. 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. 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. Now is the time for sober and spirited citizens from both parties to devise a new system for 2020. Swing or battleground states are mere accidents of geography. Popular vote is a direct vote. Do you support this movement? In other words, the Electoral College isnt sacred, and theres no reason we cant change how it works today. Now, Trump feels the Electoral College is "far better for the U.S.A." as he wrote Tuesday on Twitter. 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. If such an amendment were to pass Congress, defeat in the states is likely. And yet we have generally accepted it for centuries on the assumption it serves an important purpose. RT @Valkary: THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE SHOULD BE ABSOLVED AND ABOLISHED. Abolishing The Electoral College Would Be More Complicated Than - NPR Colin Powell was the primary beneficiary, receiving three votes. 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? If the U.S. were to abolish the electoral college, then the restrictions that territories experience against voting in this election would disappear. It's another way the system ensures it's perpetuity. 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. 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. If a candidate wins the popular vote in a state, even by a single vote, they get all of that states electoral votes. 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. Learn more here. As the graph below illustrates, over the course of the 20th century the distance between the biggest state by population and the median state increased. 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. Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center Hillary Clinton won. 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. And so each Electoral College vote in a small state like Delaware or Wyoming is worth more than an Electoral College vote in a big state like California. The US presidential election takes place 3 November. They want the option to select a president based on who gets the most votes nationally. In part, that is because the Electoral College is constitutionally mandated, and abolishing it would require a constitutional amendment. The cost of conducting a nationwide recount could be hundreds of millions of dollars, which is money that may not always be in the budget. 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. 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. Only two Republicans voted for someone other than Trump and Pence. Our votes would count the same wherever they were cast. Under the current structure of the United States, there are 50 unique presidential contests instead of one nationwide affair to elect a President. Warren says she wants to get rid of the Electoral College, and vote for president using a national popular vote. Opinion | Will the Economy Make or Break Biden in 2024? Most people in America want the Electoral College gone, and they want to select a president based on who gets the most votes nationally, polls say. 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. The Electoral College Is At The Heart Of Debate Over Vote - NPR Social change can seem sudden, as if millions awoke one day to the same realization. This is the result of an amazing technological revolution, but what does it have to do with the Electoral College? So lets put the power to select the president where it actually belongs, in the hands of all the people. 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. The U.S. Census creates the allocations of electoral votes that each state receives. 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. The electoral college ignores the will of the people. 3. FiveThirtyEight polls-only forecast have predicted. The voices of small states, like Rhode Island and Wyoming, would be drowned out. PDF It's time to abolish the Electoral College - Brookings Every vote would count equally instead. Why? Students 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. A presidential candidate who doesnt receive a majority of the votes can still win the Electoral College to get into the White House. "Every vote matters," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., in Mississippi on Monday. Still, the advantages are uncertain and relatively minor. Presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., at an organizing event in February. 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. This Student Opinion prompt and a related Lesson of the Day will prepare students to participate in our live panel discussion about the Electoral College, on Oct. 22 at 1 p.m. Eastern. And this year, who knows? For example, in 1967, 58 percent favored its abolition, while in 1981, 75 percent of . Candidates focus on swing states because they actually have a chance of flipping them and winning a bucket of electoral votes. 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. And the reasons people think we need to keep the Electoral College the way it is, theyre all wrong. According to Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Paper Number 68, the body was a compromise at the. Such an effort would likely receive little or no Republican support. 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 political game in the United States would change dramatically without the Electoral College present. Which states do matter? Warren Focuses On Policy, Which Looks Like A Tough Sell With Voters, Which Democrats Are Running In 2020 And Which Still Might. 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. 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. 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. Do you agree? What happens if a candidate with electoral votes dies or becomes John Kasich, a Republican, even though Colorado law required electors to cast their votes for state-winner Hillary Clinton, a Democrat. 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. Candidates had to go to each state to talk about what they wanted to do for the country because there was no other way to let people know what was happening. After a long battle in Florida Bush won the state narrowly, giving him an Electoral College victory of 271 to 266 over Al Gore. Or does the Electoral College work the way its supposed to, even if the candidate who wins the most votes loses? Reagan would almost make a clean sweep in 1984 as well, taking 525 of 538 electoral votes and only losing Minnesota and DC. Under the current plan, states that join will not activate the compact until enough states have joined to total 270 electoral votes. 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. 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. 2. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/08/learning/is-the-electoral-college-a-problem-does-it-need-to-be-fixed.html. There have also been five elections where the eventual president didnt win a majority of the vote, including Trump in 2016. That position, shared by many Republicans, makes it highly unlikely that there would be sufficient support for changing the system. 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. The point is, even accounting for demographic changes, neither party has a built-in advantage under a popular-vote system. Interestingly, the congressional caucus system is very close to the system the British used to replace Prime Minister David Cameron. Donald Trump was open about ignoring the pleas of the safe blue states like New York when they were suffering the most from the coronavirus pandemic. When you know that one state will vote the same way in every election, there is no need to visit that place. 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.