Sometimes one party does better for a few election cycles. The current system is weighted too heavily in favor of celebrity appeal, demagogic displays and appeals to narrow special interests. And it confines vote-counting disputes to just one, or maybe a few, states. 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. But if youre a voter in the United States, theres a really good chance your vote doesnt count the way you think it does. 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 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. 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. Activists, with the aid of misguided state legislators, have begun to gain ground in the states, with NPV arising as a serious threat to the stability of our presidential election process. [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. Paul Krugman, my Opinion colleague, wrote Thursday that "the idea that the economy is going to pose a huge problem for Democrats next year isn't backed by the available data.". Younger voters also tended to support abolishing the Electoral College. Almost no one would adopt an Electoral College today if we were starting from scratch. We already see gridlock and partisanship in Congress that limits the opportunities for collaboration. They are simply party loyalists who do not deliberate about anything more than where to eat lunch. "Precisely what it does is proportionately advantages where the people are," Levy said. In recent years, a new scheme has emerged that claims it can bypass the seemingly insurmountable impediment of a constitutional amendment process but have the same result of nullifying the Electoral College: The National Popular Vote Compact (NPV). Students, watch the video and read Mr. Wegmans Op-Ed, and then tell us: What does democracy mean to you? Keeping the electoral college restricts the voting to acknowledged states only. In 2016, Donald Trump won the White House by earning a majority of electoral votes, even though almost three million more Americans voted for Hillary Clinton. Do you agree with Mr. Wegman that we should change how the Electoral College works to ensure that the popular vote chooses the president? Eliminating this barrier could mean that some parts of the country never become part of the overall campaign. The most popular alternative is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC). The interests of the minority would no longer receive protection. According to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., if the Electoral College of the United States was abolished, the collapse of the already weakened two-party political system would be fast tracked; resulting in multiplication of splinter parties. Interestingly, the congressional caucus system is very close to the system the British used to replace Prime Minister David Cameron. In part, that is because theElectoral Collegeis constitutionally mandated, and abolishing it would require a constitutional amendment. The presidential election in 2016 saw a modern-era record for faithless electors, but five of them came from the Clinton camp. Based on your understanding, do you believe the Electoral College is democratic? 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. 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. ## For the purposes here, all electoral votes in a given state were awarded to the proper winner, thus attributing faithless electors to the proper candidate. After a long battle in Florida Bush won the state narrowly, giving him an Electoral College victory of 271 to 266 over Al Gore. 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. The basis for the Electoral College is found inArticle II, Section 1of the Constitution, which spells out how the president shall be chosen. The three-fifths clause became irrelevant with the end of slavery (thankfully! Warren Focuses On Policy, Which Looks Like A Tough Sell With Voters, Which Democrats Are Running In 2020 And Which Still Might. There can be distinctive advantages to one party in a decade where three election cycles are possible. Technically, it is . It would create problems when multiple candidates run. 2. Some of the most important framers, including James Madison and James Wilson, wanted to write a direct popular vote into the Constitution. Next week five hundred and thirty-eight American citizens will travel to their state capitals and elect the president of the United States. Every vote would count equally instead. .just the large States - the Cities would end up running the Country. It would only come into effect when it could guarantee that outcome. Many of them were unhappy with the results. The amendments Fully overhauling the way the president is selected would take a Constitutional amendment, which would require the votes of two-thirds of. Although there are some advantages to this system, the disadvantages have been highlighted in recent elections. During the 2020 election cycle, there are several candidates who are promising to work on doing just that. A New Mexico doctor describes the pain and horror of caring for COVID-19 patients. There have been some unusual elections, such as the 1972 affair when Richard Nixon took 520 electoral votes to George McGoverns 16. Still, Levy said if he had to bet on whether the U.S. will still be using the Electoral College in 20 years he thinks it will. However, it is possible to win the presidency without winning the popular vote. 260, February 19, 2020, p. 9, https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/report/destroying-the-electoral-college-the-anti-federalist-national-popular-0. It seems to me that the original system may have been superior to what we now have. Out of those visits, almost 70% of them happened in only four states: North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Abolishing the Electoral College would get rid of this confusing process. In other words, the Electoral College isnt sacred, and theres no reason we cant change how it works today. Hillary Clinton won. It causes some votes to have greater weight than others. That means centrist ideas tend to be the ones that receive the most traction instead of the individual priorities of platforms on the extreme left or right. 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. It causes some votes to have greater weight than others. 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? In each case, the number of faithless electors who exercised that behavior would not have had a meaningful impact on the outcome. As the Washington Post has shown, the four most populous states, California, Texas, Florida and New York are all dramatically underrepresented in todays Electoral College. But as people moved and the economy changed so did that ratio. 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. Think about it. And this year, who knows? Third, a national election might provide a cure for the delegitimation of presidential authority that has afflicted the last three presidencies. Throughout history there have been over 700 attempts to reform or abolish the Electoral College, according to the Congressional Research Service. That, critics say, means devaluing the votes of many non-white voters too. "It really does over-represent some sparsely populated states, and it provides some skew and bias to our system that I just don't think is healthy anymore," said Paul Gronke, a political scientist at Reed College. It's just not clear how you could do that.". It is extremely difficult to amend the Constitution. Could Washington administer a national recount in the event of a close result? The Electoral College has given one candidate a majority win in this political structure since 1992, but there have been four times when the winner of the election didnt receive a clear majority of the votes across the entire country. Editors Note: In 2016, we asked two professors to debate whether the Electoral College should cease to be the mechanism used for selecting the U.S. president. Using bots can streamline some law firm work, American Bar Association Stanford, CA 94305-6105 But heres the important part. This ensures that smaller rural and industrial communities will have their issues addressed by those seeking office. Thats because, regardless of its overall merits, change is always rooted in the politics of the day. 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. 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. A presidential candidate who doesnt receive a majority of the votes can still win the Electoral College to get into the White House. 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. 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. Tell us about it. Learn more about how to use our free daily writing prompts for remote learning. 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. Do you support this movement? Republicans especially worry about tipping the balance away from their party. Generally, we count on the Republican and Democratic parties to nominate not the best people, but candidates who combine a degree of popular support with the experience and temperament to govern. Polls from FiveThirtyEight polls-only forecast have predicted. The chances of a recount would increase dramatically with election. In each case, the number of faithless electors who exercised that behavior would not have had a meaningful impact on the outcome. For years, a majority of Americans have opposed the Electoral College. Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center In winner-take-all states, all electoral votes cast for the state are assigned to the candidate who gets the most electoral votes. 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. 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.
what would happen if the electoral college was abolished