Do away with Electoral College
Our Utah Attorney General recently joined an amicus brief for a lawsuit to throw out all the votes of Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan in the 2020 presidential election. I want to thank him for bringing into the light the dangers of States Rights in making election laws. We are all Americans no matter what state we live in and should all be guaranteed some basic safeguards.
Election laws should not be left to individual states. There should be national standards around voter registration, the number of polling places per capita and geographic polling ease (how far away a person has to travel to be able to vote), voting time frames and the rules that allow a ballot to be thrown out (hanging chads, naked ballots, illegible signatures, etc.). An added benefit to national standardization is that it would be easier for voters to educate themselves about how to vote.
The most popular argument against the Electoral College is that it violates the fundamental principle underlying democratic society: political equality, or, commonly phrased as “one person, one vote.”
Indeed, because all states are assigned at least three electors regardless of their population size, the Electoral College gives small states a disproportionate number of electors per capita. As a result, a person who receives the largest number of votes does not necessarily win the election, as was the case in the presidential contests of 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016.
In the wake of the 2020 election, there have been renewed calls to abolish the Electoral College and replace it with a national popular vote. The Washington Post editorial board, for example, writes,
The most popular argument against the Electoral College is that it violates the fundamental principle underlying democratic society: political equality, or, commonly phrased as “one person, one vote.”
Indeed, because all states are assigned at least three electors regardless of their population size, the Electoral College gives small states a disproportionate number of electors per capita. As a result, a person who receives the largest number of votes does not necessarily win the election, as was the case in the presidential contests of 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016.
In the wake of the 2020 election, there have been renewed calls to abolish the Electoral College and replace it with a national popular vote. The Washington Post editorial board, for example, writes,