Electoral College System and NPV

Electoral College System and NPV

Compare the way in which we elect Presidents in our current system to the proposal of the National Popular Vote movement. Which method is superior? Explain your answer.

There have been five presidential elections in American history where the successful presidential candidates did not win the popular vote. The recent such vote was the November 2016 election between Donald Trump, Republican, and Hillary Clinton, the Democrat. In this election, Donald Trump secured a less popular vote but had the majority of the Electoral College, while his opponent, Clinton, had won a popular majority but had less Electoral. In the year 2000, the same thing happened between George W. Bush and Al Gore, where Gore won a popular majority and less Electoral College, while Bush won more Electoral College but had a less popular majority (Schwartz, 2020). Such happenings in American elections, especially the two recent ones, elicited mixed discussion from scholars and critics of the current Electoral College system.

The popular vote school of thought is spearheaded by the National Popular Vote movement (NPV), which argues that the current electoral college system is unfit and does not represent the majority’s views (Schwartz, 2020). In other words, this movement is advocating for the election system’s change where the presidential candidate who wins the majority vote is declared the winner. Unlike today, where a candidate can win a majority popular vote and not be declared a winner because he won the lesser electoral college. They argue that a purely democratic system that the U.S. claims to be should consider a majority rule to be the major clause that decides the presidential winner.

There have been numerous attempts to change the Electoral College system through the amendment of the Constitution, but these plans have failed. The attempts have failed because both Congress Houses should have a two-thirds vote to effect these changes. This is an uphill task for the popular vote proponents; it is hard to convince both houses to pass the law with a two-thirds vote (NPV, 2019). Many Congressmen agree that the majority rule should be the clause that determines the presidential election’s winner. However, the Congressmen are skeptical of the strategy and procedures that the movement processes; this is why the attempt to change the Constitution to adopt the NPV’s popular vote law fails.

Most of the Congressmen and scholars agree with the view of the NPV that a democratic society should employ the majority vote rather than the Electoral College system. However, they point out that adopting the majority vote rule through the proposed presidential election procedures contravenes the Equal Protection Clause enshrined in the Fourteenth Amendment (NPV, 2019). The Equal Protection Clause states that no state will enforce any law that shall deny the privileges or the immunities of American citizens, nor shall any state deprive any individual life, liberty, or property without due process or deny any citizen equal protection of the law (Belenky, 2016). By referring to this clause, the opponents think that passing the majority vote rule would deny many Americans their rights or privileges of voting for their preferred presidents since the procedures of doing so, as proposed by the NPV, would deny them that chance. This is the second reason why many attempts to change the Constitution have failed since the emergence of the NPV movement in 2006.

The National Popular Vote movement has a strategy explaining how the presidential election should be conducted under the popular majority vote. The idea of the NPV plan, its constitutionality, and its deficiencies have become a national movement. The NPV suggests building a coalition of the state and D.C. that collectively controls at least 270 electoral votes to award their electoral votes (Schwartz, 2020). The plan proposes that a pair of presidential and vice-presidential candidates whose state and D.C. get the most votes countrywide would be awarded all the electoral votes that are controlled by the coalition (Belenky, 2016). The plan states that a majority of the electoral votes in the playa in the election are to be given to the pair of the candidates preferred by the coalition regardless of the following reasons. First, the candidates should be given the electoral votes despite the fact that the voters’ will in the coalition states subscribed to the plan.

Secondly, the candidates get the votes without considering the states’ attention, which does not subscribe to the plan and does not favor the candidates’ pair. Thus, the NPV plan would determine the winning presidential pair on the tally of votes received by all the electors countrywide rather than the current state-by-state tally of electoral votes (Schwartz, 2020). Under the NPV plan, as few as 11-20 states and D.C. that control 270 electoral votes combined may have a chance to choose the U.S. President of all other states regardless of whether other states subscribe to the NPV plan (Belenky, 2016). The whole procedure of electing a president and the vice president proposed in the NPV plan seems complicated and unfair on many fronts. It violates the equal protection clause and can also lead to political cartels in American politics who gang up to take these two most high political seats.

Comparing the proposed NPV plan and the current electoral college system, it is clear that there are many differences since the current one seems to be still fair to the proposed one (Astor, 2020). The current system considers both the majority vote and the regions, but it emphasizes the region more than the popular vote. This is why Bush and Trump lost the majority popular vote but still were declared winners because they won more electoral colleges (Cohen, 2019). The current system requires that the presidential winner in the presidential election win a majority of the electoral colleges, that is, at least 270 electoral colleges, half of all the electoral colleges.

A candidate show has the potential to win the majority of these colleges likely to have been accepted by the majority of different regions of the U.S. However, candidates who win the popular majority vote are not declared winners since the majority vote may come from a few states with a larger population than other states (Astor, 2020). Thus, declaring such candidates winners disadvantages other states, and this may mean that presidential winners would often come from a state with a huge population (Cohen, 2019). Therefore, adopting the NPV plan may cause mistakes that could deny many citizens equal protection rights.

The overall morale and security that comes with the current Electoral College system bring a balance among candidates. It ensures that candidates who may be favored by aspects such as home population or money cannot take advantage of those who come from low-population regions and those who do not have money. The majority popular vote proposed by NPV would encourage disparity between those who have wealth and those from populated states those who come from states with a small population (NPV, 2019). Therefore, the current Electoral College system is far better than the proposed NPV plan. It is no wonder its proponents have tried several times to initiate the Constitution’s change to adopt it, but they have always been failing.

References

Astor, M. (2020). The Electoral College Is Close. The Popular Vote Isn’t. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/article/popular-vote-electoral-college.html

Belenky A.S. (2016) The National Popular Vote Plan: A Brilliant Idea or a Dead-on-Arrival Delusion? In: Who Will Be the Next President? Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44696-7_6

Cohen, A. (2019). The National Popular Vote, Explained. Retrieved from https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/national-popular-vote-explained

Constitutional ceneter.org. (2020). Citizenship Rights, Equal Protection, Apportionment, Civil War Debt Retrieved from https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendment/amendment-xiv

NPV. (2019). Take Action Now – Tell Your Legislators to Pass National Popular Vote. Retrieved from https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/

Schwartz, J. (2020). EXPLAINER: They lost the popular vote but won the elections. Retrieved from https://apnews.com/article/AP-explains-elections-popular-vote-743f5cb6c70fce9489c9926a907855eb

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Compare the way in which we elect Presidents in our current system 

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The U.S. Constitution stipulates that Electors will vote for the office of President and Vice President, what we commonly refer to as the Electoral College. Two times in the 21st century the candidate with the most popular votes across the United States has not won the most votes in the Electoral College, hence losing the election. Some activists and scholars are arguing that a democratic system of government requires that majority rules; therefore, the candidate for President who receives the most popular votes should win the election. Further, there is a proposal to bypass the Electoral College without having to amend the Constitution (which is basically impossible).

Electoral College System and NPV

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