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U.S. Representative Joe Kennedy is calling for abolishing the electoral college. A list of reasons and petition can be found on his website:
“The Electoral College has, throughout our history, been an anti-democratic tool of injustice:
– It was created to boost the power of slave states and to protect the ruling class from the will of the people.
– It results in some Americans’ votes counting more than three times as other Americans.
– Presidential candidates take massive swaths of our country for granted, while battling over a handful of so-called “swing states.”
– In two of the last 5 presidential elections, the candidate who lost the popular vote ended up winning the presidency.
– The Electoral College has tragically mangled the core promise of democracy in the United States: one person, one vote.
It’s time to elect our president with a National Popular Vote.”
To abolish the electoral college and elect U.S Presidents with a popular vote, an amendment to the U.S. consititution would have to be made. That would require Congress to approve the amendment with a two-thirds majority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate or by a constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of the State legislatures. Then the proposed amendment would have to be ratified by three-fourths of the States (38 of 50 States).
Do you support using the popular vote to elect the President of the United States? Comment below!
Abolish the electoral college
Simply put, you would be taking away the people’s choice to those who live in rural, low population areas of the country. The majority of large liberal states would take over the voice and choice of “We the People” throughout this great country. Leave it alone!
But in answer to the Senator’s question, I maintain that on practical grounds the people in the smaller States, would be deprived of their electoral vote on the basis put by the Senator.
Mr. President, Senate Joint Resolution 31, concerning which there has been little, if any, public interest or knowledge, constitutes one of the most far-reaching, and I believe mistaken-schemes ever proposed to alter the American constitutional system. No one knows with any certainty what will happen if our electoral system is totally revamped as proposed by Senate Joint Resolution 31 and the various amendments which will be offered to it. Today, we have a clearly Federal system of electing our President, under which the States act as units. Today, we have the two-party system, under which third parties and splinter parties are effectively discouraged from playing more than a negligible role. Today, we have a system which in all but one instance throughout our history has given us presidents elected by a plurality of the popular vote …
… And today we have an electoral vote system which gives both large States and small States certain advantages and disadvantages that offset each other.
Now it is proposed that we change all this. What the effects of these various changes will be on the Federal system, the two-party system, the popular plurality system, and the large-State-small-State checks and balances system, no one knows. Nevertheless, it is proposed to exchange this system-under which we have, on the whole, obtained able Presidents capable of meeting the increased demands upon our Executive-for an unknown, untried, but obviously precarious system which was abandoned in this country long ago, which previous Congresses have rejected, and which has been thoroughly discredited in Europe.
Senator John F. Kennedy
This was JFK’s reply to a 1956 proposal before the US Senate, to abolish the Electoral College, in favor of proportional voting.
There was a proposal to eliminate the Electoral College, put before the US Senate, in 1956. Here is a Senator’s comment at the time.
But in answer to the Senator’s question, I maintain that on practical grounds the people in the smaller States, would be deprived of their electoral vote on the basis put by the Senator.
Mr. President, Senate Joint Resolution 31, concerning which there has been little, if any, public interest or knowledge, constitutes one of the most far-reaching, and I believe mistaken-schemes ever proposed to alter the American constitutional system. No one knows with any certainty what will happen if our electoral system is totally revamped as proposed by Senate Joint Resolution 31 and the various amendments which will be offered to it. Today, we have a clearly Federal system of electing our President, under which the States act as units. Today, we have the two-party system, under which third parties and splinter parties are effectively discouraged from playing more than a negligible role. Today, we have a system which in all but one instance throughout our history has given us presidents elected by a plurality of the popular vote …
… And today we have an electoral vote system which gives both large States and small States certain advantages and disadvantages that offset each other.
Now it is proposed that we change all this. What the effects of these various changes will be on the Federal system, the two-party system, the popular plurality system, and the large-State-small-State checks and balances system, no one knows. Nevertheless, it is proposed to exchange this system-under which we have, on the whole, obtained able Presidents capable of meeting the increased demands upon our Executive-for an unknown, untried, but obviously precarious system which was abandoned in this country long ago, which previous Congresses have rejected, and which has been thoroughly discredited in Europe.
Senator John F. Kennedy
https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKSEN/0895/JFKSEN-0895-008