How to Make the Electoral College Irrelevant
GUEST BLOG / By
Robert Reich--We must make sure our democracy doesn’t ever again elect a
candidate who loses the popular vote. That means making the Electoral College
irrelevant.
Here’s how: As you probably know, the Constitution assigns
each state a number of electors based on the state’s population. The total
number of electors is 538, so any candidate who gets 270 of those Electoral
College votes becomes president.
Article II of the Constitution says states can award their
electors any way they want. So all that’s needed in order to make the Electoral
College irrelevant is for states with a total of at least 270 electors to agree
to award all their electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the
popular vote.
If they do that, then automatically the winner of the
popular vote gets the 270 electoral college votes he or she needs to become
president.
Already 10 states and the District of Columbia have passed
laws to do this – awarding all their electoral votes to the candidate who wins
the popular vote, as soon as the 270 elector goal is met. Together, these
states total 165 electoral votes.
So all we need now is some additional states with 105
electors to pass the same law, agreeing to reward all their electoral votes to
the winner of the popular vote – and it’s done. We’ll never again elect a
president who loses the popular vote.
The effort is known as the National Popular Vote Interstate
Compact. If your state hasn’t yet joined on, make sure it does.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Robert B. Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of
California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing
Economies. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for
which Time Magazine named him one of
the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has
written 15 books, including the best sellers "Aftershock", "The
Work of Nations," and "Beyond Outrage," and, his most recent,
"The Common Good," which is available in bookstores now. He is also a
founding editor of the American Prospect
magazine, chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary, "Inequality
For All." He's co-creator of the Netflix original documentary "Saving
Capitalism," which is streaming now.
-->
No comments:
Post a Comment