This discrepancy between the Electoral College and the popular vote created considerable contentiousness about the electoral system. It set the Trump presidency off on a rough start and generated a critical tone regarding his administration. Miles turned out to be the first of many. The precedent set by these people creates uncertainty about how future Electoral College votes could proceed. This possibility became even more likely after a recent court decision. This was the highest number in any modern election.
A Colorado lawsuit challenged the legality of state requirements that electors follow the vote of their states, something which is on the books in 29 states plus the District of Columbia. In the Baca v. Hickenlooper case, a federal court ruled that states cannot penalize faithless electors, no matter the intent of the elector or the outcome of the state vote. Deriving their name from Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, they convinced a few members of the Electoral College to cast their votes for other Republican candidates, such as John Kasich or Mitt Romney.
A three-judge panel on the U. Based on this legal ruling and in a highly polarized political environment where people have strong feelings about various candidates, it is possible that future faithless electors could tip the presidency one way or another, thereby nullifying the popular vote. The problems outlined above illustrate the serious issues facing the Electoral College.
Having a president who loses the popular vote undermines electoral legitimacy. Putting an election into the House of Representatives where each state delegation has one vote increases the odds of insider dealings and corrupt decisions. Allegations of balloting irregularities that require an Electoral Commission to decide the votes of contested states do not make the general public feel very confident about the integrity of the process.
And faithless electors could render the popular vote moot in particular states. Yet there is a far more fundamental threat facing the Electoral College. At a time of high income inequality and substantial geographical disparities across states, there is a risk that the Electoral College will systematically overrepresent the views of relatively small numbers of people due to the structure of the Electoral College.
As currently constituted, each state has two Electoral College votes regardless of population size, plus additional votes to match its number of House members. That format overrepresents small- and medium-sized states at the expense of large states. The prosperous parts of America include about 15 states having 30 senators while the less prosperous areas encapsulate 35 states having 70 senators.
Those numbers demonstrate the fundamental mismatch between economic vitality and political power. Through the Electoral College and the U. Senate , the 35 states with smaller economic activity have disproportionate power to choose presidents and dictate public policy. This institutional relic from two centuries ago likely will fuel continued populism and regular discrepancies between the popular and Electoral College votes. For years, a majority of Americans have opposed the Electoral College.
For example, in , 58 percent favored its abolition, while in , 75 percent of Americans did so. More recent polling, however, has highlighted a dangerous development in public opinion. Americans by and large still want to do away with the Electoral College, but there now is a partisan divide in views, with Republicans favoring it while Democrats oppose it. For instance, POLITICO and Morning Consult conducted a poll in March that found that 50 percent of respondents wanted a direct popular vote, 34 percent did not, and 16 percent did not demonstrate a preference.
Two months later, NBC News and the Wall Street Journal reported polling that 53 percent of Americans wanted a direct popular vote, while 43 percent wanted to keep the status quo.
These sentiments undoubtably have been reinforced by the fact that in two of the last five presidential elections, the candidate winning the popular vote lost the Electoral College. Yet there are clear partisan divisions in these sentiments. Members of both the House of Representatives and of the Senate objected to counting that vote for Mr. Wallace and insisted that it should be counted for Mr. Nixon, but both bodies decided to count the vote as cast.
The power either of Congress or of the states to enact legislation binding electors to vote for the candidate of the party on the ticket of which they run has been the subject of much debate. In Ray v. The state court had determined that the Twelfth Amendment, following language of Clause 3, required that electors be absolutely free to vote for anyone of their choice. Justice Reed wrote for the Court:. The suggestion that in the early elections candidates for electors— contemporaries of the Founders—would have hesitated, because of constitutional limitations, to pledge themselves to support party nominees in the event of their selection as electors is impossible to accept.
History teaches that the electors were expected to support the party nominees. Experts in the history of government recognize the longstanding practice.
Indeed, more than twenty states do not print the names of the candidates for electors on the general election ballot. This long-continued practical interpretation of the constitutional propriety of an implied or oral pledge of his ballot by a candidate for elector as to his vote in the electoral college weighs heavily in considering the constitutionality of a pledge, such as the one here required, in the primary.
A candidacy in the primary is a voluntary act of the applicant. He is not barred, discriminatorily, from participating but must comply with the rules of the party. Surely one may voluntarily assume obligations to vote for a certain candidate. The state offers him opportunity to become a candidate for elector on his own terms, although he must file his declaration before the primary. Code, Tit. Even though the victory of an independent candidate for elector in Alabama cannot be anticipated, the state does offer the opportunity for the development of other strong political organizations where the need is felt for them by a sizable block of voters.
Such parties may leave their electors to their own choice. Where a state authorizes a party to choose its nominees for elector in a party primary and to fix the qualifications for the candidates, we see no federal constitutional objection to the requirement of this pledge. If custom were sufficient authority for amendment of the Constitution by Court decree, the decision in this matter would be warranted. A political practice which has its origin in custom must rely upon custom for its sanctions.
Farrand, supra, p. Blair, U. But, of course, the electors still do actually elect the President and Vice President. Blacker, U. The Electoral College has played an outsize role in several elections in recent memory, and a majority of Americans would welcome a change to the way presidents are elected.
Prior to the election, many observers noted that — if Donald Trump were to win — his most likely path toward victory would involve him winning the Electoral College while losing the popular vote as was the case in This did not happen, but the current political geography of the United States continues to allow for the possibility that the winner of the popular vote may not be able to secure enough Electoral College votes to win the office.
In and the winner of the popular vote lost the election after receiving fewer votes in the Electoral College. In order to continue tracking how the public views our system of deciding presidential elections, we surveyed 5, U.
This way nearly all U. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U. Here are the questions used for this report, along with responses, and its methodology.
In January , Pew Research Center ran a survey experiment in which this question was asked in two slightly different ways. We did this experiment in large part because reform to the way presidents are selected does not technically require amending the Constitution — the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact , for example, could in theory accomplish the same ends without the need for a formal amendment.
Since there was no substantive difference in the survey results between the two question wordings, we have adopted the revised wording. Joe Biden won the popular vote by a margin of about 7 million votes and 4.
That ultimately translated into an even greater share of the votes in the Electoral College , but — for the second straight election — the outcome in the Electoral College was determined by a relatively small number of voters in a handful of swing states. The current balance of opinion is little changed over the last few years.
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