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SACRAMENTO — Before this year’s presidential election descends into dark history, we should pause and denounce the moldy, undemocratic vote-counting system known as the Electoral College.
If Donald Trump had to win, it’s a good thing he won both in the archaic electoral system and in the national popular vote.
Who is elected president should always be decided by popular vote. Name one other position in America, from governor to first-grade class president, that is not determined by who gets the most votes.
However, in the US presidential election, the national popular vote is not subject to squatting. All that matters is the ancient electoral system, rooted in the Founders’ appeasement of the Southern slave states.
But it is helpful that Trump clearly won the popular vote as well. Because now we can have a rational conversation about the evils of the electoral system without being labeled as pathetic loser party members whining that the Democratic Party lost, even though it was supported by most American voters. Because it should be possible.
There are two things wrong with our electoral system.
Big state, small state, it doesn’t matter. If it’s blue or red, those voters will be relegated to cheap seats as faraway spectators of the main event, which will be contested in several purple battleground states. blue and red are justifiably despised
Candidates aren’t hearing from California voters about the state’s serious water problems. But they are lobbying for the decline of manufacturing in Michigan and Pennsylvania. It’s an old cliché, but it’s true. Squeaky wheels get government grease.
The culprit is not the Electoral College itself. Electors are awarded in this way by the states. They will be distributed on a winner-take-all basis. It doesn’t matter whether a candidate swings a state by one vote or a million votes. All of a state’s electoral votes go to the winner of the popular vote.
Two small states (Nebraska and Maine) are exceptions. They award electoral votes based in part on winners in congressional districts. That makes more sense than a strict winner-take-all.
At least 5.9 million people in California voted for Republican Trump. They might as well have used their ballots to light the fireplace. All 54 electoral votes in the state will go to Democrat Kamala Harris, who won about 9.1 million votes. (The total number of votes will increase slightly once the final count is complete.)
It’s the same in Texas, only the other way around. There, 4.8 million people voted for Harris. However, all 40 electoral votes will go to Trump, who is supported by 6.4 million people.
Like Democrats in Texas, Republicans in California were effectively disenfranchised.
Polls show that an overwhelming majority of Americans, including Californians, want to abolish the electoral college and elect the president by popular vote.
A September poll by the Pew Research Center found that 63% of Americans want the presidency to be decided by a national popular vote.
But conservative Republicans want to maintain the status quo. That’s because two Republican candidates in recent years have won the presidency while losing the popular vote: Trump in 2016 and George W. Bush in 2000.
But abolishing the Electoral College completely is politically impossible, so it won’t happen soon. That would require a constitutional amendment. And that would require approval by three-quarters of the state Legislature, in addition to a two-thirds vote in each chamber, both of which Republicans seek to control.
Politicians in red states will not approve because Republican candidates are profiting from the current nonsense. They have no intention of turning either state purple because they enjoy attention and campaign funding as a “battlefield.”
However, there are ways to reform the system while preserving the electoral system. It just changes how electors vote. Distribute them in proportion to each candidate’s popular vote within the state.
In California, Harris won about 59% of the vote and Trump won 38%. Although the minority candidate received 3%, I would like to transfer that small amount to the major candidate for electoral vote purposes. In the end, Harris received 33 votes and Trump received 21 votes.
In Texas, Trump will win 23 electoral votes to Harris’ 17.
A proportional distribution system “will ensure that every vote counts and will reduce the likelihood that a candidate who loses the popular vote will become president,” said Irwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. In a recent Sacramento Bee editorial.
In addition to Trump and Bush, three other presidents were elected in the 1880s despite losing the popular vote: John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, and Benjamin Harrison.
“The Electoral College was based on the framers’ distrust of majority rule and greatly increased the political power of slave states,” Chemerinsky said.
The South was concerned about the North’s large population and the Yankees’ political influence. So the founders compromised. Slaves were not allowed to vote, but they could be counted as three-fifths of the population for purposes of allocating seats in the House of Representatives based on population.
This strengthened the South in the electoral system, since a state’s number of electors was based primarily on the size of its congressional delegation. But every state gets an elector for each senator. And each state, regardless of its size, is given two rights, a quota intended to weaken the power of the great powers.
I haven’t done all the math, but it’s a safe assumption that Trump would still have won the electoral votes under a proportional distribution system.
Constitutional law scholar Chemerinsky believes the reform bill could be passed by parliament without amending the constitution.
But first, Americans will need to insist that they choose their president, not their state.
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