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THIS IS A NON-PARTISAN ISSUE. No matter who wins the 2024 Presidential election, almost half of the country will be disappointed, and some will be angry at a broken system. Continuing the status quo is getting more frustrating. It is high time to abolish the electoral college system and let every vote count, no matter where a citizen lives in the United States.
It is fundamentally unfair that the voters in the “battleground” or “swing” states are far more powerful than all the rest of the voters in the majority states. (As of 2024, these “battleground” states are Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.)
Even though Wyoming is not a “swing state”, a Wyoming vote is 3.72 times more powerful than a Californian vote, thanks to Wyoming’s lower population. [1]
It is dangerous that the popular votes representing people’s choices can be subject to changes by the electors, who are appointed by partisan officials at the state level.
It invites Presidential candidates to prioritize matters concerning the battleground states over matters concerning ALL Americans, just to get themselves elected.
Any need for the electoral college has become obsolete. The information age and technology advancement we live in today equalizes every voter’s access to elections. Therefore, the 235-year-old rationale – the balance of power between slave-owning states and non-slave-owning states – for the creation of the electoral college no longer holds. [2]
This is contrary to the intention of the Constitution and its Amendments regarding equal rights under the law. This is against the “one person, one vote” principle.
It is time to get rid of the electoral college!
Again, this is a non-partisan issue. Across the political spectrum, advocates for abolishing the electoral college system include Brookings Institution, the Heritage Foundation, National League of Women Voters, Pew Research Foundation, etc.
There are two ways: either by Constitutional Amendment, or by the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC).
Amending the US Constitution requires a two-thirds vote in both US House of Representatives and the Senate.Three-fourths of state legislatures must then ratify the amendment. This is challenging, since states with disproportionately more voting power won’t easily give up.
NPVIC, on the other hand, can bypass this challenge, with the state’s plenary power over election, believed to be given by the US Constitution. As of now, 17 states have already signed up, consisting of 77% of the 270 electoral votes needed to elect a President. When more states join the pact, they will award all their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Sign up and do something, at various organizations, such as:
https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/ (Bipartisan support for NPVIC)
https://www.lwv.org/opov (League of Women Voters)
https://abolishtheelectoralcollegepac.org/
https://www.thenationalvote.com/
https://abolishtheelectoralcollegepac.org/
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Footnote [1]: California has an estimated 718,404 inhabitants per electoral vote, whereas Wyoming has 192,920 per vote.[6][note 1], according to Wikipedia.
Footnote [2]: Electoral College History – How did we get the Electoral College?
The Founding Fathers established the Electoral College in the Constitution, in part, as a compromise between the election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens.
[Electoral College part of deal was to get Southern Slave states to adopt the Constitution. Southern states had lower population than Northern Free states. Deal also includes:
Three-fifths Compromise https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-fifths_Compromise
The Three-fifths Compromise was an agreement reached during the 1787 United States Constitutional Convention over the inclusion of slaves in a state’s total population. This count would determine: the number of seats in the House of Representatives; the number of electoral votes each state would be allocated; and how much money the states would pay in taxes.
Slave holding states wanted their entire population to be counted to determine the number of Representatives those states could elect and send to Congress. Free states wanted to exclude the counting of slave populations in slave states, since those slaves had no voting rights. https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/history
©Joanne Z. Tan all rights reserved.
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Two arguments in favor of the electoral college have been overlooked.. 2nd most important.: have you noticed that the candidates spend most of their time and money in, and offer most of the goodies to, the “battleground” states? Not fair to the rest of us, but changing trends and demographics
mean that, over time, many new battleground states will emerge as exiting ones cease to be. But almost no states with small populations will ever acquire enough people to be courted by the office-seekers in a nation-wide election.
M
Most important: currently, “election irregularities in one state can be promptly challenged. and may be able to steal that state’s electoral votes, but no more. Without the electoral college, however, voting fraud in a very large state could hijack the entire election, and investigating that possibility could take many weeks if not months.
Good point, Steve!
@Steve Kerr: Popular vote or Electoral College, if there is fraud in a very large state, the number of that state’s vote will be reflected in the numbers of electoral numbers, or by the total numbers of votes, a/k/a popular vote numbers, and they have the SAME effect on the entire election. So why bother having electoral college, which in itself is creating more fraudulent opportunities since the ones appointed to be the electoral vote certifiers can be unfaithful to the popular vote numbers and change the result at that level?