what would happen if the electoral college was abolished what would happen if the electoral college was abolished

The winner of the Electoral College vote is usually the candidate who has won the popular vote. So what would happen if we got rid of the Electoral College? Thats not true either. That is, the compact does not go into effect until there is a critical mass of states for it to be effective. Currently, 15 states and DC have approved the NPVIC. The US presidential election takes place 3 November. When Americans are polled about the Electoral College, most of them say that they want it to disappear. hide caption. There is a trigger for NPV to go into effect, and we are creeping ever closer toward it.10 When enough states have entered the compact to reach a majority of the electoral votes270 out of 538the compact will then kick in. Getting rid of the Electoral College would radicalize politics. By Jack Rakove, the William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies and a professor of political science. That is not to say the Electoral College is without its advantages. I wrote a whole book on the subject. Abolishing the Electoral College seems to be the next logical step in that process. This isnt rocket science. We need to think hard, and quickly, about how to reform three aspects of the presidential nomination process: the debates, the primary elections and the conventions. Presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., at an organizing event in February. LIASSON: It would take a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College, so that's not going to happen. When you know that one state will vote the same way in every election, there is no need to visit that place. This is because the president is not . 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. Presidential electors are not more qualified than other citizens to determine who should head the government. 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. Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center 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 line garnered one of her largest roars of applause for the evening. The presidential election is held every four years on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. [2] The compact would then be 43 Electoral College votes short of going into effect. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. For example, in 1967, 58 percent favored its abolition, while in 1981, 75 percent of . But dont forget, Bush won the popular vote four years later by three million votes. 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,. But the reality is, right now neither the small states nor the big ones have the voice they should. 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. Hans von Spakovsky, Destroying the Electoral College: The Anti-Federalist National Popular Vote Scheme, Heritage Legal Memorandum No. Imagine a Florida-style recount in every precinct in America. Beto O'Rourke Announces His Run For President In 2020, Moderate Democrats Under Pressure As Party's Left Grabs Attention. There are over 300 million people currently residing in the United States, but only 538 people actually get to choose who gets to be the president. "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. That means more people can feel like their government accurately represents their needs. This is the result of an amazing technological revolution, but what does it have to do with the Electoral College? I think it would make more sense to split the electoral votes based on the state-wide vote so if a state has 10 electoral votes and the election goes 60% to 40%, the candidates gets 6 votes and 4 votes respectively. Third, defenders of the Electoral College also claim that it supports the underlying value of federalism. 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. This ensures that smaller rural and industrial communities will have their issues addressed by those seeking office. The Electoral College website now has an easy-to-remember address. What do you think of Mr. Wegmans arguments? It causes some votes to have greater weight than others. In a polarized political environment, such an institutional structure remains entrenched. The point is, even accounting for demographic changes, neither party has a built-in advantage under a popular-vote system. We already see gridlock and partisanship in Congress that limits the opportunities for collaboration. So lets put the power to select the president where it actually belongs, in the hands of all the people. And it confines vote-counting disputes to just one, or maybe a few, states. "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. But under this system, those Republican votes might as well not exist. Three happened in the 19th century; none in the 20th century and two in the 21st century. /content/aba-cms-dotorg/en/news/abanews/publications/youraba/2019/october-2019/q--the-electoral-college--is-it-open-for-interpretation-by-the-c, Trade, Sports & Professional Associations, Affordable Housing & Community Development Law. Alexander Hamilton was a significant supporter of the Electoral College. Today the pact has the support of states and Washington D.C. that total 181 electoral votes, largely those that have gone for Democrats in recent years. We survived. Electors manage the needs of the state and community instead of following the will of the general public throughout the country. All parts of the country would not be involved in the selection of the president. Enslaved people couldnt vote, but they were still counted toward the slave states representation in Congress. In two of these elections, a. The first is easily dismissed. 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. Throughout our nations history there have been many unwise attempts to abolish the Electoral College, but these proposed constitutional amendments saw little success and unsurprisingly failed to gain traction. Anyone can read what you share. It causes some votes to have greater weight than others. List of the Pros of Abolishing the Electoral College 1. It seems to me that the original system may have been superior to what we now have. By subscribing to this BDG newsletter, you agree to our. Under this option, Florida would give 15 Electoral College votes to Clinton and 14 to Trump. Note: A previous version of this post stated that awarding 2 electoral votes per state (plus D.C.) to the national popular vote winner would form a baseline of 138 votes. During the 2020 election cycle, there are several candidates who are promising to work on doing just that. According to Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Paper Number 68, the body was a compromise at the. See: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/10/21/can-the-electoral-college-be-subverted-by-faithless-electors/. If the U.S. were to abolish the electoral college, then the restrictions that territories experience against voting in this election would disappear. 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. But explaining exactly how it does this remains a mystery. For years, a majority of Americans have opposed the Electoral College. 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. Stanford, CA 94305-6105 In August, a panel of the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appealsruleddifferently in a case raising similar issues. Both times in 2000 and 2016 it was the Republican candidate who got fewer votes but ended up in the White House. It would stop the requirement to redistribute the electoral votes. 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. Here are the yea and the nay. 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. The main problem with the Electoral College today is not, as both its supporters and detractors believe, the disproportionate power it gives smaller states. Abolish the electoral college. Five times in our history, presidential candidates who have won more votes than their opponent have still lost the election. For one thing, slavery. The threat is the effort to create a so-called . 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. I used to like the idea of the Popular Vote, but now realize the Electoral College is far better for the U.S.A. Gregg says that change would radicalize politics. Why? During the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump had 90% of their campaign stops in only 11 states. It channels presidential politics into a two-party system, which is superior to multiparty systems where fringe factions can exercise too much leverage. 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. But really, scholars say, consensus is constructed through thousands of small acts over generations. But explaining exactly how it does this remains a mystery. Does this interactive influence how you feel about the Electoral College? Remember what we said back in Myth No. 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. A New Mexico doctor describes the pain and horror of caring for COVID-19 patients. Even though proponents of the Electoral College want it to stay so that every state can have a specific say in the outcome of the election, the candidates are already starting to behave in the same ways that people fear they would when targeting a majority population groups. https://saveourstates.com/threats/the-status-of-npv, https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/report/destroying-the-electoral-college-the-anti-federalist-national-popular-0. **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). But experts say reforming this practice isn't likely anytime soon for a number of reasons. A plan to scrap the Electoral College via constitutional amendment would not pass in the current environment. Electoral vote totals will equal 538. So if the results of most presidential elections tend to reflect the choice of the people, why do we still have the Electoral College? But there is something called the National Popular Vote Compact. There will always be a concern about the tyranny of the majority in the United States. Does It Need to Be Fixed? Our votes would count the same wherever they were cast. The chances of a recount would increase dramatically with election. 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. John Kasich, a Republican, even though Colorado law required electors to cast their votes for state-winner Hillary Clinton, a Democrat. The compact requires states to pass laws that would award their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote nationally. As a result, Republicans and Republican state governments are incentivized to maintain the current system. 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. Today, 48 states use winner-take-all. 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. Is the way Americans choose the president undemocratic and unfair? The system calls for the creation, every four years, of a temporary group of electors equal to the total number of representatives in Congress. Abolishing the Electoral College stops swing states from having sway in the election. 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. Spend some time moving states into the Biden and Trump circles and make notes about what you notice and wonder. This spring, numerous candidates for president expressed support for either abolishing or changing the Electoral College, which ultimately picks the U.S. president. 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. He makes the case that both Republicans and Democrats should support a change. 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. The reasons for the Electoral College may not be relevant any more. Two hundred years after James Madisons letter, the state winner-take-all rule is still crippling our politics and artificially dividing us. 1, that Democrats will win a popular vote every time. What would happen if the Electoral College was abolished? It would create problems when multiple candidates run. 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. Warren says she wants to get rid of the Electoral College, and vote for president using a national popular vote. 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. 4. 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. 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. As Madison wrote in an 1823 letter, states using the winner-take-all rule are a string of beads and fail to reflect the true political diversity of their citizens. Still, the advantages are uncertain and relatively minor. 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. 11. 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. In 2016, the results were even more dramatic. That means there must be a majority of states that agree with a specific candidate instead of allowing the people to decide who they want to have as president. A supporter of President-elect Joe Biden holds up his cellphone to display the electoral college map, outside the Philadelphia Convention Center on Nov. 7. On September 18, 1969, the U.S. House of Representatives voted by an overwhelming 338 to 70 to send a constitutional amendment to the Senate that would have dismantled the Electoral College,. 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. 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. As we all know only too well, in practice this archaic system means that the person who wins the most votes may not win the election. The outcome has prompted some to question whether the Electoral College the body of officials that formally elects the nation's president every four yearsis good for democracy, and even compelled outgoing California Sen. Barbara Boxer to file legislation to abolish the 229-year-old system. 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. Every vote would count equally instead. That means the information receives an update every 10 years. He disliked the practice so much he called for a constitutional amendment barring it. But the Electoral College is worse than merely useless. Thats almost 1.5 billion votes. 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. Bible Commentary Bible Verses Devotionals Faith Prayers Coloring Pages Pros and Cons, 7 Uplifting Prayers for Desperate Situations, 50 Biblically Accurate Facts About Angels in the Bible, 50 Most Profitable Youth Group Fundraising Ideas for Your Church, 250 Ice Breaker Questions for Teen Youth Groups, 25 Important Examples of Pride in the Bible, Why Jesus Wept and 11 Lessons from His Tears, 25 Different Ways to Worship God and Praise the Lord. After a long battle in Florida Bush won the state narrowly, giving him an Electoral College victory of 271 to 266 over Al Gore. That means that the national winner would start out with 102 Electoral College votes. Now, Trump feels the Electoral College is "far better for the U.S.A." as he wrote Tuesday on Twitter. 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 interests of the minority would no longer receive protection. Instead of having a regional focus that incorporates specific campaigning elements, there would be a national campaign instead. A presidential candidate who doesnt receive a majority of the votes can still win the Electoral College to get into the White House. 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. It's another way the system ensures it's perpetuity. The only difference is that in this unique structure, the voice of the minority can actually shout down the desires of the majority. Warren says she wants to get rid of the Electoral College, and vote for president using a national popular vote. Throughout history there have been over 700 attempts to reform or abolish the Electoral College, according to the Congressional Research Service. But the Constitution and the courts have allowed the states some leeway to make changes to how their Electoral College representatives are chosen. 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. Only Rutherford Hayes, with a 3% difference, won the electoral college despite being in the minority.