Why The Electoral College needs to GO
Public support for the abolition of the Electoral College has been growing as of late, and for good reason. The Electoral College was initially created because our founding fathers didn’t trust the common man to be informed enough to make such an important decision, they wanted a buffer to assure a tyrannical unqualified populist wouldn’t become president, the idea of “tyranny of the majority”. Yet, ironically The Electoral College has now given us the most uninformed unqualified president ever.
Trump now being the 2nd straight Republican elected via the electoral college while simultaneously losing the popular vote has upset many Democrats and Independents and rightly so. There’s something seriously off with that, its inherently anti-Democratic.
Not only does it blow wind in the face of democratic ideals but its also harmful in several other ways.
The “winner take all” approach to the electoral college creates apathy in the election process, especially when only a couple of states(Pennsylvania, Michigan,Wisconsin,Florida) as seen below determine the outcome.
Another dimension to our antiquated system is that it can be profoundly unfair to certain states. Lets do some math on two. Wyoming has 577,737 people with 1 Representative and 2 Senators. California has 39.56 million people with 53 Reps and 2 Senators. That’s 192,579 per congressman in Wyoming and 792,272 per congressman in California, so your vote matters 3.73 times more in Wyoming. I’m no math whiz but that isn’t equal representation.
This inequity is double the punch in the stomach for Democrats because both the electoral college and Senate heavily favor rural conservative states. On top of that 80 percent of gerrymandering nationwide favors Republicans, so while our founding fathers were worried about “tyranny of the majority” they seem to have accidentally installed “tyranny of the minority”.
I’ll leave you with this pretty insane but possible scenario for 2020 given by Steve Kornacki of MSNBC below.
Picture source: @prioritiesUSA
Now we need to urge state legislators, in states with the 74 more electoral votes needed, to enact the National Popular Vote bill.
There have been hundreds of unsuccessful proposed amendments to modify or abolish the Electoral College – more than any other subject of Constitutional reform.
To abolish the Electoral College would need a constitutional amendment, and could be stopped by states with as little as 3% of the U.S. population.
Instead, state legislation, The National Popular Vote bill is 73% of the way to guaranteeing the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country, by changing state winner-take-all laws (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), without changing anything in the Constitution, using the built-in method that the Constitution provides for states to make changes.
It requires enacting states with 270 electoral votes to award their electoral votes to the winner of the most national popular votes.
All voters would be valued equally in presidential elections, no matter where they live.
Candidates, as in other elections, would allocate their time, money, polling, organizing, and ad buys roughly in proportion to the population
Every vote, everywhere, for every candidate, would be politically relevant and equal in every presidential election.
No more distorting, crude, and divisive and red and blue state maps of predictable outcomes, that don’t represent any minority party voters within each state.
No more handful of ‘battleground’ states (where the two major political parties happen to have similar levels of support) where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in 38+ predictable winner states that have just been ‘spectators’ and ignored after the conventions.
We can limit the power and influence of a few battleground states in order to better serve our nation.
The bill would take effect when enacted by states with a majority of the electoral votes—270 of 538.
All of the presidential electors from the enacting states will be supporters of the presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes among all 50 states (and DC)—thereby guaranteeing that candidate with an Electoral College majority.
The bill was approved in 2016 by a unanimous bipartisan House committee vote in both Georgia (16 electoral votes) and Missouri (10).
Since 2006, the bill has passed 40 state legislative chambers in 24 rural, small, medium, large, red, blue, and purple states with 271 electoral votes.
The bill has been enacted by 16 small, medium, and large jurisdictions with 196 electoral votes – 73% of the way to guaranteeing the presidency to the candidate with the most popular votes in the country
NationalPopularVote
So. California and New York will determine the presidency. How is this NOT tyranny of the majority?
Does a human life matter less in NY or Cali? Why should they have less of a say in the federal government? I’m not sure I get your point. If we are going to have a democracy it should have equal representation.
5,187,019 Californians live in rural areas.
1,366,760 New Yorkers live in rural areas.
California and New York state together would not dominate the choice of President under National Popular Vote because there is an equally populous group of Republican states (with 58 million people) that gave Trump a similar percentage of their vote (60%) and a similar popular-vote margin (6 million).
In 2016, New York state and California Democrats together cast 9.7% of the total national popular vote.
California & New York state account for 16.7% of the voting-eligible population
Alone, they could not determine the presidency, much less “rule the country.”
In total New York state and California cast 16% of the total national popular vote
In total, Florida, Texas, and Pennsylvania cast 18% of the total national popular vote.
Trump won those states.
The vote margin in California and New York wouldn’t have put Clinton over the top in the popular vote total without the additional 60 million votes she received in other states.
In 2004, among the four largest states, the two largest Republican states (Texas and Florida) generated a total margin of 2.1 million votes for Bush, while the two largest Democratic states generated a total margin of 2.1 million votes for Kerry.
New York state and California together cast 15.7% of the national popular vote in 2012.
About 62% Democratic in CA, and 64% in NY.
New York and California have 15.6% of Electoral College votes. Now that proportion is all reliably Democratic.
Under a popular-vote system CA and NY would have less weight than under the current system because their popular votes would be diluted among candidates.