"Once one party was in control of a state, they realized that they could maximize their partisan influence by awarding all of the state's electoral votes to their preferred candidate," said Kermit Roosevelt, a constitutional law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. But that option could present more serious problems because of gerrymandering, with one expert deeming the system going nationwide a "Republican's dream."Įrikson said the system would shift politics in "crazy ways," he said, where instead of battleground states, competitive districts would get all the attention. Others say instead of a winner-take-all system, states could turn to the example of Maine and Nebraska, which award electors by congressional district as well as the overall vote for those state's remaining two electoral votes. representing 196 electoral votes - have enacted the national popular vote bill into law, so if states having 74 electoral votes were to sign on, potentially a minimum of three more states, it would automatically go into effect.Ĭritics say that without the consent of Congress, the interstate pact is unconstitutional, and election experts, considering partisan politics, predict it will be challenged in court if enough states sign on. If states possessing at least 270 electoral votes were to sign on, the pact would ensure that the presidential candidate who received the most votes nationwide took office.Ĭurrently, legislatures in 15 states and Washington D.C. His solution: the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, an agreement among states to pledge to cast all of their electors to whomever wins the national popular vote, regardless of their state result. But the end result in recent years, as the urban versus rural divide has deepened, is that a handful of battleground states have gained a disproportionate amount of power and prominence. The system was a compromise for the framers, making concessions to count slave populations in the otherwise less populated South and not placing too much trust in either Congress or the public with choosing the president. Bush in 2000 by a margin of around 500,000 votes and Donald Trump in 2016 by about 3 million.Īt issue is the uniquely American system of the Electoral College, which provides that a group of specially chosen representatives (538 at present) for each state choose the president, generally using a winner-takes-all model based on the popular vote. Yet five times in history, American presidents have won office while losing the popular vote, with two of those instances coming in the past 20 years - George W. Democracy is built on majority rule and the concept that every person's vote counts.
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