As the U.S. Government Archives likes to say, the Electoral College is a process, not a place. This structure was placed in the Constitution by the Founding Fathers of the United States as a compromise between having a vote in Congress to elect the President and the election of a candidate by qualified citizens. The corrosiveness of this system isnt only a modern concern. 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. 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 pros and cons of abolishing the Electoral College must go beyond the 65% of people who want it gone. Supporters of a national popular vote argue something must be done; the Electoral College disproportionately inflates the influence of rural areas while undervaluing the votes of cities. In each case, the number of faithless electors who exercised that behavior would not have had a meaningful impact on the outcome. As we begin the third decade of the 21st century, change benefits the Democrats. 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 the Electoral College is a racist relic, why has it endured? States have the power to award their electors however they like. Whether youre Republican or Democrat, the Electoral College is unfair. What would happen if the Electoral College was eliminated? Keeping the electoral college restricts the voting to acknowledged states only. Our 230-year-old jerry-built system for picking the president, known as the Electoral College. 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. The truth is . 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. It said that the Colorado secretary of state erred in removing an elector who cast his vote for then-Ohio Gov. Debate renewed in 2016 after theelectionof the fifth U.S. president who won the presidency despite losing the popular vote. 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. ), and the big state-small state divide no longer animates our politics, if it ever did. Both times in 2000 and 2016 it was the Republican candidate who got fewer votes but ended up in the White House. Do you agree? 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. 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. The correct number is 102. Now, Trump feels the Electoral College is "far better for the U.S.A." as he wrote Tuesday on Twitter. Do you think any of these arguments, or others, are convincing reasons for preserving the Electoral College as it stands now? As Americans look at their election processes, a complete review of the pros and cons of abolishing the Electoral College is useful when taking this unique structure into account. Having this structure go away would encourage more third-party development. No other advanced democracy in the world uses anything like it, and for good reason. Does It Need to Be Fixed? 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. Under the current system, voters in each state cast their ballots for electors, of which 270 are necessary to win. The Current Threat | The Heritage Foundation 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. The electors can vote their conscience as well, refusing to follow what their state elections guide them to do. US election 2020: What is the electoral college? - BBC News 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. 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. The voices of small states, like Rhode Island and Wyoming, would be drowned out. It is no secret that the administrations of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama all suffered, from the outset, from efforts to imply that there was something improper and unworthy or even suspicious in their elections. It's another way the system ensures it's perpetuity. The Electoral College Is At The Heart Of Debate Over Vote - NPR Presidential elections have little if anything to do with the subject, even when some candidates claim to be running against Washington.. Here's What Critics Say Is Wrong With The Electoral College : NPR Warren Focuses On Policy, Which Looks Like A Tough Sell With Voters, Which Democrats Are Running In 2020 And Which Still Might. Democratic presidential candidates are weighing in too. Continually updated tools and resources to help move your practice and the legal profession forward during COVID-19 and beyond. In his video, Mr. Wegman offers counterarguments to what he calls myths about the Electoral College. 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. In other words, the Electoral College isnt sacred, and theres no reason we cant change how it works today. I wrote a whole book on the subject. So lets put the power to select the president where it actually belongs, in the hands of all the people. 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. While people were moving to the coasts, especially California, the Electoral College stayed the same. 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. 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 interests of the minority would no longer receive protection. The Constitution originally stipulated that the top vote-getter chosen by these electors would become president and the individual with the second-most votes would be vice president. Changing or eliminating the Electoral College can be accomplished only by an amendment to the Constitution, which requires the consent of two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of the states. This is the heart of the problem with the Electoral College. 2: The founders wanted it this way. Under the current structure of the United States, there are 50 unique presidential contests instead of one nationwide affair to elect a President. Technically, it is . That means the information receives an update every 10 years. 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. When enough states join in this interstate compact, itll mean that the popular-vote winner will always become president. Does the Electoral College need to be reformed? We have an Electoral College because thats what the founders added to the Constitution at the last minute. Having the person who loses the popular vote win the presidency will seriously undermine the legitimacy of our elections. What Might Make Joe Biden Unelectable Is a Very Scary Threat 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. Trump made a similar argument earlier this week, warning that "smaller states & then entire Midwest would end up losing all power.". Of the 700 attempts to fix or abolish the electoral college, this one Thrown together at the last minute by the countrys founders, it almost immediately stopped functioning as they thought it would. In the 20th century there were 25 presidential elections and none of them resulted in an Electoral College winner who lost the popular vote. Rural Americans would be serfs if we abolished the Electoral College 3Qs: Should the Electoral College be abolished? - News Sometimes one party does better for a few election cycles. But there is something called the National Popular Vote Compact. 10. 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. Why? Your membership has expired - last chance for uninterrupted access to free CLE and other benefits. Jesse Wegman, the author of the Opinion pieces above, is one of the guests on our Oct. 22 live panel for students. It would only come into effect when it could guarantee that outcome. Why? "Every vote matters," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., in Mississippi on Monday. 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. So, let me make the case for its abolition and its replacement by a simple national popular vote, to be held in an entity we will call (what the heck) the United States of America. 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. Yet, ratification happens not by popular vote but by state legislature. For almost the first half century of the republic, presidential candidates were chosen by the caucuses of the two parties in the House and the Senate. The chances of a recount would increase dramatically with election. We will focus on elections in the 20th and 21st centuries. That system worked well until the two-party system briefly died with the Federalist Party. Christine Stenglein and Saku Gopinath provided research support for this post. So, the state at the median had 19% of the population of the largest state. 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). In the video above, we delve into the reasons people give for keeping the Electoral College and why theyre wrong. 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. 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. The size of a state does not affect our real political preferences, even though the Electoral College system imagines that it does. Today that system is threatened by a proposal called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, or. The distinction matters. Should we abolish the Electoral College? - Constitution Center 2023 BDG Media, Inc. All rights reserved. What would happen if the Electoral College was abolished? Why did they lose? 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.