How Do We Abolish the Electoral College?
We need to make sure our democracy doesn’t ever again elect a candidate who loses the popular vote. We must abolish the Electoral College, but how?
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While we resist Donald Trump we also need to make sure our democracy doesn’t ever again elect a candidate who loses the popular vote. We must abolish the Electoral College.
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 anyone who gets 270 of those Electoral College votes becomes president regardless of the popular vote.
So how do we abolish the Electoral College? Amending the constitution is very hard – requiring a two-thirds vote by the House and Senate plus approval by three-fourths of state Legislatures.
But we can make the Electoral College irrelevant without a constitutional amendment. Here’s how:
Article 2 of the Constitution says states can award their electors any way they want.
So all that’s needed 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 be 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.