Hillary Clinton’s popular vote count keeps growing; it may grow to a 2 million vote edge. It was estimated “that were a total of 7 million votes left to be counted nationwide.” The gain in the vote count will not change the Electoral College math or the election’s outcome. “President Trump” will be our terrifying reality for the next four years.
Hillary Clinton’s presidential loss will be the fifth time in U.S. history that a losing candidate went on to be president because of the Electoral College, “putting Trump among the ranks of John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, Benjamin Harrison and George W. Bush.”
In 2000, Senator-elect Hillary Rodham Clinton promised to introduce legislation, a constitutional amendment, to abolish the Electoral College when confirmed in 2001. "We are a very different country than we were 200 years ago," Clinton said. "I believe strongly that in a democracy, we should respect the will of the people and to me that means it's time to do away with the Electoral College and move to the popular election of our president." She never followed thru on her promise – “a decision that must haunt her today.”
Clinton winning the popular vote will not change the outcome, but it has inspired a growing movement to abolish the Electoral College. Most current polls show supporters of both the Democratic and Republican parties agree the Electoral College system of selecting a president “should be modified or abolished.” There is a crescendo of calls to abolish the current electoral system since Hillary Clinton’s loss.
Last Friday, during an interview with Bill Maher, former Attorney General Eric Holder “called for an end to the Electoral College voting system.” He said it is now time to change the process of electing U.S. presidents; “it’s time to begin that campaign in earnest.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) says it may be time to think about changing the Electoral College. “This campaign revolved around 15 states of the country, right? Battleground states. My state of Vermont is a strong Democratic state; no one paid attention. Wyoming is a Republican state; nobody paid attention to Wyoming. Is that a good way? …Candidates rarely visit Democratic or Republican strongholds, like the comfortably blue California or reliably red Texas”.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) filed a bill on Tuesday to abolish the Electoral College. It is unlikely to gain any movement since the Republicans are in control of both chambers of Congress. Additionally, it is a lame duck session. Her bill calls for an amendment to the Constitution that eliminates the Electoral College. If amazingly her bill passed the two-thirds vote in both chambers of Congress, the amendment would take effect only when ratified by 38 states within seven years after passage. Boxer said, "The Electoral College is an outdated, undemocratic system that does not reflect our modern society, and it needs to change immediately. Every American should be guaranteed that their vote counts."
There are several petitions being circulated by many progressive groups to eliminate the Electoral College or to make Hillary Clinton president by popular vote including one here on the Daily Kos.
- Change.org has a petition asking the Electoral College to elect Hillary Clinton as president when it meets in December. Technically it has the power do so. Lady Gaga has tweeted about this one. Millions have signed the petition.
- MoveOn.org has a petition to amend the Constitution and abolish the Electoral College. 500,000 people have signed this petition.
Due to the fact there have been “eight consecutive presidential elections with an average national-popular-vote margin of less than 5 percent”, the U.S. will continue to have presidential elections determined by the Electoral College. In addition, the “state winner-take-all laws” are the reason the election campaigns are concentrated in just 12 states (battleground states), ignoring the other “states with 70 per cent of the population.” Basically, 30 per cent of the population elects the president.
The consequences of this focus on the twelve states are not only the electoral loss of the presidency, but this focus on the battleground states also influences how important policies are shaped. Decisions are made with “an eye to winning the 12 critical states.” Candidates have no incentive to be attentive to the needs of the other states “where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind (and therefore have nothing to gain and nothing to lose).” This electoral system must be eliminated. It degrades American democracy.
As the United States works to persuade the rest of the world to accept “democracy, ethnic equality and women's rights,” at home we choose our president by an undemocratic system whose early design was “in part to cater to slavery and to accommodate the disfranchisement of women.” At the beginning of this country, the deepest divisions were between North and South about the question of slavery, not large vs small states.
Akhil Reed Amar, a Yale constitutional law professor, writes in his latest book, The Constitution Today…”the evidence shows the founders were actually motivated by their need to protect the institution of slavery and not a fear of low-information voters.”
When a direct national election for the president was proposed at the Constitutional Convention, Virginia's James Madison argued against the proposal; such an election would allow the “North to outvote the South.” The infamous “three-fifths compromise,” allowed the South to count each black slave, a half-million at the time, as three-fifths of a person for determining the number of congressional representatives that each state would receive. If the president was directly elected by voters then “the South would have less say in electing the president.” By relying on the Electoral College, the south maintained a strong voice in “selecting the president and protecting their interest” for many decades.
The Electoral College, “gave each state a number of electors based on its number of members in Congress. On a date set by Congress, state legislatures would choose (now chosen by the parties) a set of electors who would later convene in their respective state capitals to cast votes for president. Because there were no political parties back then, it was assumed that electors would use their best judgment to choose a president.”
The biggest winner was Virginia due “largely to its massive slave base.” The presidency was occupied by a slaveholding Virginian for 32 of the first 36 Constitutional years.
”Southerner Thomas Jefferson won the election of 1800-01 against Northerner John Adams” due to the Electoral College’s slavery effect. It was the crucial margin of victory. As remarked at the time, “Thomas Jefferson metaphorically rode into the executive mansion on the backs of slaves.”
The legacy of the “three-fifths compromise” is the continuance of a successful southern strategy. Some say the Electoral College helps the Republicans. Acclaimed author Joyce Carol Oates tweets that “the electoral college will forever tip balance to rural/conservative/"white"/older voters --a concession to slave-holders originally.”
“In light of this more complete (if less flattering) account of the electoral college in the late 18th and early 19th century, Americans should ask themselves whether we want to maintain this odd—dare I say peculiar?—institution in the 21st century.”
Those against reform or abolishing the Electoral College cite three arguments:
Meme #1: “Electors filter the passions of the people”
Defenders of the Electoral College will often cite “its original purpose: to provide a check on the public in case they make a poor choice for president.” It certainly did not prevent the election of Donald Trump, a very poor choice for president. It facilitated his election. As to “informed citizens,” that is a question up for debate due to the glut of information and misinformation available today.
That defense is no longer valid; electors do not work “as independent agents or as agents of the state legislature.” They’re selected by party leaders at the state conventions for their loyalty
Meme #2: “Rural areas would get ignored”
After 2000, a popular argument that “conservative websites and talk radio” make is that candidates would ignore low-population areas and spend all their time in big cities. This is a false argument. The Electoral College incentivizes candidates to campaign “in cities in 10 or 12 states rather than in 30, 40 or 50 states.”
The 2016 campaign data “indicate that 53 percent of campaign events in the two months before the November election were in only four states: Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Ohio. …none of the four candidates ever went to the 27 states which include almost all of rural America.”
Meme #3: “It creates a mandate to lead”
Some advocates for the Electoral College believe “its winner-take-all nature at the state level causes the media and the public to see many close elections as landslides,” a mandate for the winning candidate. Maybe this “artificial perception of landslide support” is a good thing. It helps the winning candidate enact their agenda. It can also lead to a “backlash and resentment” in the losing majority, look at the anti-Trump protests happening across the country.
One way to reform the Electoral College, “without amending the Constitution,” is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact created by John Koza, a Stanford University professor. “The idea is to award each state’s electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote instead of the winner of the state popular vote.” The National Popular Vote concept is supported by the U.S. Constitution (Article II, Section 1) which gives the states exclusive control over awarding their electoral votes. The states have the power to award their electoral votes as they see fit. The place for more information is www.nationalpopularvote.com.
$1.3 billion was spent on Hillary Clinton’s campaign, “if just 1/20th of that had been spent promoting a reform this country desperately needs, she would be president.”
The organizers for the national popular vote have been working for many years to get to 270 electoral vote states to sign on, but it is chronically underfunded. Nationally, the idea is supported by “70% of the public.”
At this point, 10 states (RI, VT, HI, MD, MA, WA, NJ, IL, NY, CA) and Washington, D.C., accounting for a total of 165 electoral votes, have signed on.” On the Monday before Election Day, “New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed legislation” that continues New York’s commitment to the National Popular Vote compact beyond its expiration date in 2018.
Significant progress has been made by “passing one legislative chamber in 12 additional states with 96 electoral votes. The bill was most recently approved by a bipartisan 40-16 vote in the Republican-controlled Arizona House, 28-18 in the Republican-controlled Oklahoma Senate, 37-21 in the Democratic-controlled Oregon House, and unanimously by legislative committees in Georgia and Missouri. A total of 2,794 state legislators have endorsed it.”
States with democratic governors not signed onto the compact are: CO 9, CT 7, DE 3, LA 9, MN 10, MT 3, OR 7, PA 20, VA 13, WV 5; combined have 86 electoral votes.
States with initiative processes not signed on to the compact are: AK 3, OR 7, ID 4, NV 6, UT 6, AZ 11, MT 3, WY 3, CO 9, ND 3, SD 3, NE 5, OK 7, MO 10, AR 6, MI 16, OH 18, ME 4, FL 29; combined have 153 electoral votes. If the question regarding the national popular vote was brought directly to the voters, it would most likely pass. The cost to get the remaining 105 electoral votes would be a fraction of what was spent on the Clinton campaign.
“We the people” can and must make abolishing the Electoral College a national issue now. It starts by informing all elected state Democratic and Republican officials the Electoral College needs to be changed for the sake of democracy. They must vote to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. The first effort should start with states that have democratic governors. If not passed, “we the people” must come together and create an initiative in a few of the above states to get the 105 electoral votes needed. We must start now; we can’t wait until 2018.This can happen. Let’s get ready for 2020.