Campaigns with bipartisan majorities to strengthen and protect civil rights laws during the reagan and bush presidencies, very active since then and a friend of mine for 37 years. Leslee sherrill is former president of abc news, fellow of the school of politics working on a nonpartisan initiative, democracy project which focuses on Electoral Reform with ralph. She worked as white house staffer at the Manhattan Institute for policy and research. Pete peterson is the dean and senior fellow at Pepperdine University school of Public Policy, 2014 republican candidate for california secretary of state and in another state he might have succeeded. Trevor potter, former chairman of the United States federal election commission, former attorney for senator john mccain and president george hw bush, i assume not at the same time, founder, president and general counsel of the Campaign Legal center which is working in areas of Campaign Finance and elections, political communication and government ethics. A superb comoderator, adam grushan, is Vice President of our student group, a standalone student group, we are proud to be associated with them. He is a senior at the university of Southern California and he will kick it off with the first question which all of you could take a whack at. First off, you for being here. We really appreciate it is students hearing from you guys and hearing your Expert Opinions and thoughts on such an important issue. What i am interested in is the fact that we tried to reform the Electoral College for 60 years, we proposed 700 amendments and they have all failed. Is this tenable . Can we reform the college . What are your thoughts . Who wants to go first . I will take the initial crack. First of all i want to thank everybody involved for the extraordinary opportunity and i thank all of us for figuring out ways to address the extreme partisanship and polarization in this country right now. This first question is related to that. No question there is a strong bipartisan majorities that wants to do something about the Electoral College. The problem is, i was in law school last time there was a significant effort to abolish the Electoral College and have direct vote, two president of candidates in favor of it, bipartisan majorities in the house and senate. The problem is our checks and balances, you need filibuster proof in the senate on something that controversial and takes two thirds of both houses and three quarters of the states. Virtual impossibility on any issue i can think of in the United States, passing that kind of constitutional amendment. That does not mean, however, the we cant try to reform the Electoral College in the sense of how the electors vote. There are many ways of looking at this. I dont want to filibuster, i could go through all of them. Many of us would like the direct vote. If we cant get it and i dont we can, we can do the National Popular vote which 11 states have already adopted, 165 electoral votes. They are saying passing a law in these states that if there is a candidate, and there will be, who has got the most votes, they will commit their electors to that candidate with the most votes. Whether the electors carry their state. Once they get to 270 state laws would become active because 270 is how many votes you need in the Electoral College. There are other ways of doing this. For example proportional representation. A lot of us feel strongly that would be a great way to go. If you get 45 president ial candidate in a particular state you get 45 of the electors. The problem with that is it would increase Voter Participation, would respect polarization and partisanship but it can be gained. For example of california was proportional representation, 45 , 55 , texas decides not to do it and all the votes in texas go to a particular candidate, democrats in this case would be at a disadvantage but you can turn it around and texas does proportional representation but california doesnt and democrat in california are at a disadvantage. There are others that will be discussed but we should continue to talk about reform of how these electors come about. There have to be ways and there are several ways we will discuss later that could work. I am very hopeful despite the efforts that have gone unsuccessfully in the past. When you end up with the fifth election, the popular vote and Electoral College dont meet, perhaps the climate is right, people will be ready to make a change. I agree with ralph, constitutional amendment is not realistic or feasible. But the states can do something. All the power with those Electoral College votes are in the hands of the states. Most of the states turned them over to their Political Parties. I tried to call both parties to get a list of who voted on my behalf in the state of california and got put on hold and transfer it around and sent back to the secretary of state to which i said that is fine but you picked these electors. I would like to see the list of names of people who voted on my behalf. I could not get that list accept from wikipedia. The Republican Party has it posted. When i asked who are they . Did not answer my question. It is a hall of mirrors but doesnt have to be. If the voters are educated enough to see that they have ceded all their power in their state electoral votes to the Political Parties on their behalf they can take that power back and pass Ballot Initiatives and reforms that will make those votes more representative. For americans i dont think we can change our destiny. Im very hopeful. I have to note that i can tell you who these people are. These people are people you are absolutely certain will be faithful and will vote the way you want them to vote if you carry the state. I did that to test and pretend i was your average voter and wanted to know and got put on hold an awful lot. I agree with ralph that it is a virtual impossibility you would have a constitutional amendment to overturn the Electoral College but it is also important to take a step back and say why we havent Electoral College, this is one of many checks and balances which understands we are not america, we are the United States of america. If we are the United States of america there will be part of the system, two senators per state or the Electoral College that are not democratic and if your sense of that term. There are filters by which small states, smaller states and being part of this larger compact, the United States of america, the constitution, are seeking equal representation. There is something to be said for that proportional division of votes. To your point it would have to be a compact on those terms. I would not support the compact as related to what is known as the National Popular vote that you might have a state and it electors decide differently than its voters did even if that was different than the National Vote total. If you were able to pass a compact that incorporated this proportional representation then i could foresee if you set limits to get to 45 or 40 states that were going to sign on to it, california and texas would sign on to it, you could have something that i would be more representative. There are two things to note. One is that the Electoral College bears absolutely no resemblance in its functioning to what the founders intended. They did not design what we are using. They had three elections, we had at the beginning of this country, the first we do for George Washington and the second for john adams, where it worked as intended, which is to say the leading citizens of every state selected by the legislature got together and decided who they are not to be president. Aside from the legislature, votes by citizens, it was the point was it was an outside group that would select the president. That stopped after the third election and we ended up with Political Parties, you had jefferson versus adamant and from then on you had a totally different system which is now one where the electors are selected depending on popular vote in every state. Im not saying that is wrong but it is important to remember is that what we have was designed for a different system and a different country than where we are. That is point one. 2, i agree that despite that, everyone is now sufficiently invested in what we have a. Other reasons have arisen to retain it. The small states feel that they are overrepresented in the college compared to what they would be if it was the popular vote. You also have the country polarized on many issues, one of them has become the Electoral College versus the popular vote because there was nobody in the 20th century who was elected with winning by the Electoral College, the popular vote. We had two in the 21st century, george w. Bush and donald trump, one effect of that is that republican support for the Electoral College has risen because they like that results and they see the attack on it as an attack on the legitimacy of those elections. I i agree with the view that says we are not going to be able to get of the Electoral College by constitutional amendment. We are sufficiently polarized that that does not have a chance. However i believe we can still fix the Electoral College and there are two things i would do to fix it and i think those could be by constitutional amendment because i dont believe either would be controversial are seen as partisan. One is the problem referred to earlier, what is called a faithless elector which means the state goes for candidate x, the electors pledged to candidate x, vote, one of them doesnt vote for x. There was pressure this time on trump electors not to vote for trump. In the past there have been electors who cast protest votes or voted for a thirdparty candidate and ironically that is what the constitution says because it goes back to the idea of electors being wise citizens but it is the best we would be outraged as a country if faceless electors were to tip an election to the other side. My proposal would be to get rid of the electors. Leave the Electoral College but no reason to have 50 some people from california casting votes. California has x number of votes in the Electoral College, they shall automatically be considered cast for the winner of the popular vote in that state. You can do that statebystate, dont have to have physical electors who are a time bomb waiting to go off. The other which i personally think would be sufficiently supported by both parties to work would be the idea of proportional representation where you would say those votes cast by a state would be in proportion to citizens vote in that state. You run into these problems of what happens if some states join and some dont, if you had a constitutional amendment that said that you suddenly put all the state into play, california and texas are treated equally, democrats get votes out of texas, republicans get votes out of california. Seems to me that might be something that would solve an underlying political problem while leaving states with representation, that might be worth looking at. Ralph wants a brief comment and i have a quick follow up and we will move on. One point i want to wonderscore, someone who does not get the most votes doesnt get it. The other point with respect to the Electoral College we want to maximize citizen participation and we want candidates to campaign in all 50 states or as many as possible. As i was studying for this event i came across a startling statistic. In the 2016 president ial election, the general election, donald trump and hillary clinton, 70 of their Campaign Appearances were in six states. 94 of their Campaign Appearances were in 12 states. That means 40 states were ignored by the president ial candidates in the general election. That is not something we want to continue. We want to have them out in as many states as possible getting as many citizens as possible involved. Quick follow up i want to spend a lot of time on. It occurred to me when i thought of this electoral compact, if you have 270 people sign up to it they will vote for the winner of the popular vote, would you then to make sure you dont have people fooling around with the voting processes in various states in a close election, wouldnt you have to have some uniform federal standard for voting for president . Otherwise you could have an election like 2000 where Everybody Knows it is going to be very close and theres a huge incentive for people to try to cheat . That was what was supposed to happen with the help americans to vote act which was passed two years after the thousand election by voter role. So the implementation which was intended to be standardized on voting equipment and those things was not well enforced. You would agree you would have to have some on a National Level to make sure votes were honestly cast and counted. I wouldnt agree was necessary but i would support it because it is right. For whatever, 12 states in play now theres huge incentive already to play with those numbers. I dont is occurring. I think our election system is by and large not subject to fraud. It may be subject to incompetent as we found in florida in 2000, congress has worked since then to improve the voting system. One of three republicans in santa monica, the peoples republic of santa monica. One of the positive externalities whether it is proportional representation or looking at reform in the Electoral College, on president ial election cycles my vote doesnt count. The impact of that for a lot of people, i vote every way because that is what i do and a lot of people do but what happens in down ticket races under the president ial ticket, we dont yet know what that would mean. What would it mean for democrats in texas to understand your vote may have an impact at the top of the ticket and now youre going in and have 15 other things to vote for, how will it impact that . One of the things in california that is worth observing is we have a larger conversation about what is it going to take to get people to turn out his understanding and a lot of these landslide cases which if you look at the 216 election all the landslide states have the lowest voter turnout because people like me understood quite frankly there was no purpose casting a vote for president if i wasnt going to vote for the democratic nominee. The proportional idea of splitting the Electoral College votes radically changes had. Either of these would, quite interesting for example, the hispanic turnout in texas is pretty low. Democrats dont put as much effort as they might to get fat turnout up because they dont think will carry texas so that may change in the next eight years. If every vote counted people would put more effort into turning those folks out. Speaking of every vote counting or being counted and every voter being able to vote, back to adam for a minute. I am wondering if you need federal protections to encourage people to get people out to vote. Any prospect a lot like that can be passed in hyperpartisan era . What we have, Voting Rights laws already passed in the 60s to in sure that people can vote regardless of their race. That was the issue in the 60s where state attempting to discourage or prevent minorities from voting and that is an open battle today. Many people say that is what is happening, some of the Southern States that adopted these draconian, 1sided voter id measures, in texas for instance, you have to have photo id to vote and theres a list of what is an acceptable photo id and the legislature in its wisdom decided that a concealed weapon carry permit was a permissible voter id, but a photo id issued by the state of texas to with universitys students was not. That is designed, i want to make sure students vote at a lower rate, people who are nra members vote at a higher rate. That is a problem, not photo id per se but a system designed to discourage some blocks of voters from voting. Those are in federal courts, have been struck down a number of places. The answer to the question is we have laws that should ensure that people are treated equally, we just need to enforce those. You were involved in the Voting Rights act, i remember working with you on it. What do you think . Do we need a stronger Voting Rights act . That was the first issue we worked with with senator kennedy in 198182. Senator kennedys leadership was strong, the Voting Rights act was extended for 25 years and subsequently extended for a while in 2006. Strong Voting Rights act would happen, trevor did reference this a bit with respect to the Shelby County case and chief Justice John Roberts