Can Trump Win Electoral College Again
How Trump Could Win Again, Fifty-fifty if He Loses
2 words: Electoral College.
Tala Schlossberg and
Video
transcript
transcript
Cancel the Electoral Higher and Everyone Wins
Whether you're Republican or Democrat, the Electoral College is unfair.
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Democracy is, at its core, about fair, equal representation — one person, one vote. Just if you're a voter in the United States, there'south a really good adventure your vote doesn't count the way you think information technology does. Why? Well, American democracy operates on a whole collection of cherished ideas and practices, but our arrangement as well includes some dusty old artifacts from its founding 2 centuries agone. Accept the Electoral College, America'southward system for picking the president. It's complicated, outdated, unrepresentative — in a word, undemocratic. In 2016, Donald Trump won the White House by earning a majority of balloter votes, even though about three million more Americans voted for Hillary Clinton. It wasn't the first time a president won by losing or the second or even the fourth. And this year, who knows? I've spent the by few years obsessively analyzing the Balloter College, trying to understand the concerns of the founding fathers, doing the math from different elections. I wrote a whole volume on the subject. What I learned is it doesn't have to be this way. And the reasons people retrieve we demand to continue the Electoral College the way it is, they're all wrong. Myth No. i, that Democrats volition win a popular vote every time. A lot of people don't even desire to talk about changing the Balloter College because of this idea. Republicans especially worry about tipping the residuum away from their party. And sure, the last ii times the Electoral College has awarded the White Business firm to the popular-vote loser, information technology's been to the Republican — Donald Trump in 2016 and George Westward. Bush in 2000. But don't forget, Bush won the popular vote iv years later by three million votes. In fact, let's tally upwards all the votes cast for president between 1932 and 2008. That'due south almost 1.5 billion votes. Sometimes i political party does improve for a few election cycles. But in the stop, Republicans and Democrats are virtually tied. The signal is, fifty-fifty bookkeeping for demographic changes, neither party has a congenital-in advantage nether a pop-vote system. Myth No. 2: The founders wanted information technology this style. And because they created it, it'due south a sacred work of constitutional genius. That'south not true either. The founders fought like cats and dogs over how the president should be called. They disagreed so strongly that the final organization wasn't adopted until the final minute, thrown together by a few delegates in a side room. Many of them were unhappy with the results. Some of the most important framers, including James Madison and James Wilson, wanted to write a directly popular vote into the Constitution. Why did they lose? For one affair, slavery. Enslaved people couldn't vote, but they were nonetheless counted toward the slave states' representation in Congress. That meant more power for those states nether an Electoral College system, and slave states didn't desire to give up that power. This is just one way the legacy of slavery nevertheless taints our politics today. But get this, the manner the Electoral College actually functions today isn't fifty-fifty enshrined in the Constitution. The style it gets implemented is the result of dozens of land laws, which evolved over fourth dimension as the state settled into a ii-political party arrangement. In other words, the Electoral College isn't sacred, and there'southward no reason we tin can't change how it works today. And finally, Myth 3: The Electoral Higher protects small states. You lot may have heard this one in high schoolhouse. Without the Electoral College, large states like California and New York would dominate elections. The voices of small-scale states, similar Rhode Isle and Wyoming, would be drowned out. But the reality is, right now neither the small-scale states nor the big ones accept the voice they should. Which states do matter? Places like Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan. These aren't pocket-sized states. They're swing states. Candidates focus on swing states considering they actually have a chance of flipping them and winning a bucket of electoral votes. It's no wonder the candidates fixate on issues that affair to specific groups of voters in swing states, similar fracking in Pennsylvania — "This is my 13th visit." — or prescription drug benefits in Florida. "Including prescription drug benefits and all seniors at every income level." Merely they spend almost no time talking about bug that affair to millions of voters elsewhere, like public transportation in New York or climate change in California. Donald Trump was open up about ignoring the pleas of the safe blue states like New York when they were suffering the most from the coronavirus pandemic. But swing states distort our national priorities, fifty-fifty when the president wins the pop vote. Why did President Obama spend so much money bailing out the auto manufacture? "America'southward auto industry — automobile industry — car industry" At least in office because it's located by and large in swing states, like Michigan and Ohio, states whose electoral votes he needed to win. The reason we fifty-fifty have swing states is because almost all states award their balloter votes using a winner-have-all system. If a candidate wins the pop vote in a country, fifty-fifty by a unmarried vote, they get all of that state'southward electoral votes. This means that every election, 80 percent of American voters, roughly 100 million people, get ignored. Think about it. If you live in a state where you're in the political minority, your vote is effectively erased. There are millions of Republicans in deep-blue states, similar Massachusetts and California. But under this system, those Republican votes might every bit well not exist. This is the middle of the problem with the Electoral College. But here'due south the important function. Information technology tin can be fixed. Remember what nosotros said back in Myth No. ii? The way the Electoral College actually functions today isn't even enshrined in the Constitution. The winner-take-all method is nowhere in the Constitution. States accept the power to award their electors however they similar. In fact, there is already a movement brewing among states to agree to award their electors to whichever candidate wins the national pop vote. When enough states bring together in this interstate compact, it'll mean that the popular-vote winner will ever go president. So far, 15 states plus the District of Columbia have joined in for a total of 196 balloter votes, just 74 more. And that's it. Suddenly, every voter will count, no matter where they live. This isn't rocket science. The winner of an election should be the person who gets the most votes. It's how we run every election in the country, except the most important i of all. It'south but bones fairness. And so allow'south put the power to select the president where it actually belongs, in the easily of all the people.
American republic isn't just quirky — it's also unfair. V times in our history, presidential candidates who have won more votes than their opponent have still lost the election. Why? Our 230-yr-onetime jerry-built organisation for picking the president, known every bit the Electoral College.
Donald Trump's Electoral College victory in 2016 is the nearly recent example — and the 2nd i in just 20 years — only pop-vote-losing presidents go back as far as John Quincy Adams in 1824.
How is this autonomous? How is this even fair?
It's non. Despite what you may have learned in school, it was not the product of conscientious blueprint by brilliant men. Thrown together at the last minute past the country's founders, information technology almost immediately stopped functioning as they thought it would. And yet we accept generally accustomed it for centuries on the assumption information technology serves an important purpose.
It doesn't. In the video above, we delve into the reasons people requite for keeping the Electoral Higher and why they're wrong.
This isn't a partisan issue — it'south a fairness outcome. Whether you're Republican or Democrat, your vote probably doesn't count the way information technology should. It doesn't have to be this way.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/07/opinion/trump-electoral-college-abolish.html
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