Democrats will try to abolish the Electoral College — after Trump ironically fuels debate

16 December 2024

“The Democrats are fighting hard to get rid of the Popular Vote in future Elections. They want all future Presidential elections to be based exclusively on the Electoral College!” Trump wrote on Truth Social earlier this month. All presidential elections are based on the Electoral College, and Trump appeared to be unaware that Democrats have long wanted to abolish a system many consider anti-democratic and disenfranchising. As one law professor noted, it was originally designed more than two centuries ago “to empower southern white voters.”

U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) took the opportunity to egg on Republicans last week, asking if any of his GOP colleagues “want to help me lock in using the national popular vote rather than the electoral college to choose our presidents? Looks like it’s a crucial priority of President-elect Trump…”

“While there is so much wrong in incoming President Trump’s Electoral College Truth Social post,” U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) wrote, “one thing is true: it is long past time to abolish this anachronistic institution and guarantee that the winner of the popular vote takes office. I welcome President Trump’s support for a national popular vote and encourage Republicans to follow his lead and support this Amendment.”

Democrats in the House and Senate are now pushing to abolish the Electoral College, and they say they have a plan—namely, legislation—to do so. The Electoral College is “constitutionally mandated,” and legal experts, including the American Bar Association, say it would require a constitutional amendment to remove it.

Congressman Cohen said in his statement he had “reintroduced a joint resolution to amend the Constitution by abolishing the Electoral College. The archaic vestige of a compromise with pro-slavery Southerners during the 18th century debate over the U.S. Constitution, the Electoral College can – and has, as recently as 2016 – thwarted the will of the American people by installing as president the loser of the popular vote.”

Five candidates have ascended to the presidency of the United States since its founding, despite losing the popular vote—three times in the 1800s, and, after more than a century, two times in the 2000s.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, on Monday wrote: “It is time to retire this 18th century invention that disenfranchises millions of Americans. The American people deserve to choose all their leaders.”

Popular vote losers became President in 1824, 1876, 1888, and in 2000 and 2016, as the Associated Press reported in 2020. The last two times, each was a Republican.

In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court gave George W. Bush the win when it stopped a recount in Florida. Bush lost the popular vote. The Florida vote, which decided the Electoral College win, had been disputed by Vice President Al Gore, his Democratic opponent, over the now-infamous “hanging chads.”

“In a 5-4 vote, the justices also ruled that no alternative method of recount could be established in a timely manner. In effect, the latter ruling made Bush president. That 5-4 majority was composed of the nominees of Republican Presidents George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon. The four in the minority had been nominated by three presidents: Republicans Gerald R. Ford and George H.W. Bush, and Democrat Bill Clinton,” NPR reported in 2018. “Bush v. Gore has been regarded as one of the most politically consequential decisions in the history of the court, and one that damaged the court’s preferred image of itself as an institution far removed from everyday partisan politics.”

Trump won the Electoral College in 2016, as the AP explained four years later, “304 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton’s 227 — but lost the popular count by 2.8 million votes. Though the electorate has of course grown over the years, Trump lost the popular vote by a greater margin than anyone ever elected president.”

Critics of the Electoral College say it depresses the vote—Americans who live in traditionally or strongly blue or red states are less likely to vote because they believe their vote doesn’t matter. Since all but two states are “winner take all,” California, for example, effectively “votes” for the Democratic candidate, Texas for the Republican.

But if the national overall popular vote, and not each state, were “winner take all,” the only factor in deciding who wins the White House is who gets the most votes.

“In an election, the person who gets the most votes should win. It’s that simple. No one’s vote should count for more based on where they live. The Electoral College is outdated and it’s undemocratic. It’s time to end it,” said U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI).

“Our democracy is at its strongest when everyone’s voice is heard,” wrote U.S. Senator Peter Welch (D-VT), “and right now our elections aren’t as representative as they should be because of the outdated and flawed electoral college…”

Explaining just how close the vote was, The Cook Political Report‘s David Wasserman wrote on Monday: “With nearly every state’s vote count certified, Donald Trump captured about 77.3 million votes (49.81%) to Kamala Harris’ 75 million votes (48.33%) — a 1.48-point margin that’s less than half the 3.12-point margin Trump led by when we first launched our National Popular Vote Tracker two days after Election Day and the closest popular vote result since 2000.”

“The post-election ‘blue shift’ has become a quadrennial fact of life as urban areas and blue states with more liberal voting laws take longer to count provisional and vote-by-mail ballots than rural areas and red states. But it does mean Trump’s triumph now looks like slightly less of a ‘mandate’ than some pundits made it out to be in the immediate aftermath of Nov. 5.”

“In the end, the 2024 election was decided by 229,766 votes across Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin out of about 155.2 million cast nationally, with Pennsylvania (a 1.7-point Trump margin) finishing as the ‘tipping point’ state in the Electoral College,” Wasserman stated.

CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere adds, “many things happened in the election, including an overall shift more toward Trump across a lot of demographic groups, but the difference in the election going to Trump over Harris in the Electoral College comes down to about 0.148% of the votes cast.”

Back in October, James Surowiecki, author of “The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations,” appeared to mock a Newsmax host advocating for the Electoral College. He wrote: “‘We have an electoral college so the minority can rule over the majority, just because of where they happen to live.'”

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