Electoral College Change Recommendation
These are some of the advantages of the Electoral College system over a direct election:
1. In a direct election, a candidate who has strong appeal in only a local region could win a national election.
- In a direct election, vote fraud committed at one location could affect the national results.
- In a direct election, a complete, national recount would be highly impractical.
These are some of the disadvantages of the current Electoral College system:
1. A candidate could receive a plurality of the popular votes, but lose the vote in the Electoral College. (This has happened in 1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000.)
- An Elector who was pledged to vote for one candidate could be unfaithful, and cast his vote for a different candidate.
- Except for Maine and Nebraska, every state has a "winner-take-all" rule that awards all of a state's Electors to the candidate who receives a plurality in that state's popular vote.
- States with small populations are over-represented on a per capita basis in the Electoral College, compared to states with large populations.
This is a proposal for a constitutional amendment to change the Electoral College process:
1. Eliminate the seats in the Electoral College that are allocated according to each state's seats in the United States Senate. This would reduce the number of seats in the Electoral College from the current 538 to a new total of 436.
2. Now that each seat in the Electoral College corresponds to one seat in the House of Representatives, elect each member of the Electoral College within his own Congressional district.
This proposed amendment would have the following beneficial effects:
1. The current process violates the "one person, one vote" philosophy by over-representing the voters in the states with low populations. This new amendment would give every voter in the country an equal voice in electing the President.
- This new amendment eliminates the current "winner-take-all" system that is used by 48 states, so it breaks up the "blue states" and the "red states" into several districts. This amendment changes the presidential election from a group of 51 state elections (including D.C.) into a group of 436 district elections. Currently, candidates can ignore the voters in the extremely "red" and "blue" states; but since no big state is completely "red" or "blue," this new proposal will force the candidates to campaign in every state.
- If there is a problem counting the popular votes, that counting problem will be confined to its own Electoral district. Any recount will be confined to that single district, and only one seat in the Electoral College will be in question.
This proposed amendment would have the following drawback:
1. This new amendment makes it more likely that a third-party candidate can win seats in the Electoral College, possibly preventing any candidate from winning a majority vote in the Electoral College. In such a case, the House of Representatives would elect the President.
This new amendment would retain the advantages of the Electoral College system, but greatly reduce the possibility that a candidate could receive a plurality of the popular votes but lose in the Electoral College.
In recent election years, the people of battleground states such as Florida and Ohio have been inundated with political campaign ads, while the people of Texas--a "red state"--have been ignored This amendment would level the playing field! Presidential campaign strategies would be forced to change.
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