what would happen if the electoral college was abolished

Erdogan's 'polar opposite' wants to replace him as president of Turkey. Interestingly, the congressional caucus system is very close to the system the British used to replace Prime Minister David Cameron. (John . 14 Pros and Cons of Abolishing 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. It causes some votes to have greater weight than others. He disliked the practice so much he called for a constitutional amendment barring it. 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. . The founders opted for the Electoral College because the two leading alternatives, election by Congress and by popular vote, were thought to have serious defects. Warren says she wants to get rid of the Electoral College, and vote for president using a national popular vote. In the current Congress, this would require every Democratic House member to vote in favor of such an amendment and be joined by 59 Republicans and every Democratic Senator to be joined by 19 of their Republican colleagues. And, as our colleague Bill Galston has written, the Electoral College continues to be a ticking time bomb. In the 2020 presidential election a shift of just 45,000 votes in three states, Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona could have shattered Americans belief in the legitimacy of their political system by creating a tie in the Electoral College and sending the election to the House of Representatives. Having a state-based system for electing both houses of Congress should be adequate to that task. Electors manage the needs of the state and community instead of following the will of the general public throughout the country. Stanford, CA 94305-6105 These imbalances effectively ensure that some votes in presidential elections are worth more than others, and as that imbalance scales up across the entire Electoral College, it can (under the right circumstances) provide the recipes for popular vote winners losing the Electoral College. The only point in this election where the possibility of either of the candidates losing the popular vote but still claiming an electoral victory was on July 30, when a FiveThirtyEight model showed Clinton clinching the popular vote by less than 1 percent, but still losing to Trump by two electoral votes. No more Electoral College? Here's how campaigning might change Stanford University. Plenty. Sometimes one party does better for a few election cycles. In this case, 19 state legislatures are currently controlled solely by Democrats. There have been three: John Quincy Adams, Benjamin Harrison and George W. Bush. The current structure limits Americans from pushing in this direction even though candidates tend to visit swing states more often. Most Americans would breathe a sigh of relief, I believe, if we had a system capable of choosing the U.S. equivalent of Theresa May instead of Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. In this video excerpt from our Oct. 22 panel, Mr. Wegman argues that states should join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, a plan to guarantee that the candidate who receives the most popular votes across all 50 states and the District of Columbia wins the presidency. In each state, electors meet after the presidential election on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December and cast their votes for president and vice president in separate ballots. You may have heard this one in high school. Four of the electors came from the state of Washington. That is, the compact does not go into effect until there is a critical mass of states for it to be effective. In the history of the United States, there have been six presidential elections that would have qualified for this issue and three of them have occurred since 1968. Abolishing the Electoral College: Since the year 2000, there have been five presidential elections. That fall, former Vice President Richard M. Nixon defeated . Third, defenders of the Electoral College also claim that it supports the underlying value of federalism. It also prevents candidates from going into states where the electorate typically votes for the other party. "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. Despite California having millions of more people living in the state compared to Wyoming, the weight of a vote is 30% less. By subscribing to this BDG newsletter, you agree to our. Theyre swing states. Electoral college reform: What would happen if Congressional districts But specifics vary. The corrosiveness of this system isnt only a modern concern. There were two additional votes for Sanders that were invalidated in Minnesota and one for Kasich in Colorado. 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. In the first instance, states could decide to award 2 Electoral College votes (EVs) to the winner of the national popular vote (NPV) and the remainder to the winner of the state. The Electoral College website now has an easy-to-remember address. 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. Without the Electoral College, big states like California and New York would dominate elections. The two parties have chosen the same year in which to nominate a person whom large numbers of Americans, probably a majority, regard as unfit (though not for the same reason). Gronke asks. 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. There have been some unusual elections, such as the 1972 affair when Richard Nixon took 520 electoral votes to George McGoverns 16. This spring, numerous candidates for president expressed support for either abolishing or changing the Electoral College, which ultimately picks the U.S. president. As far as the 2016 election is concerned, Hillary Clinton would still be the likely winner if the Electoral College didn't exist. 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. See: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/10/21/can-the-electoral-college-be-subverted-by-faithless-electors/. The way the Electoral College actually functions today isnt even enshrined in the Constitution. While people were moving to the coasts, especially California, the Electoral College stayed the same. 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 pros and cons of abolishing the Electoral College must go beyond the 65% of people who want it gone. 3. Christine Stenglein and Saku Gopinath provided research support for this post. President Trump once supported abolishing the Electoral College he previously felt it was a "total disaster for democracy" but since his 2016 presidential victory over Hillary Clinton, in which Clinton won the popular vote by almost 3 million votes, but Trump received 304 electoral votes, he has changed his mind. {{currentYear}} American Bar Association, all rights reserved. The most popular alternative is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC). It causes some votes to have greater weight than others. 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. ), and the big state-small state divide no longer animates our politics, if it ever did. 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.

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