About time that the electoral college voting be abolished.

Simple matter ...

1. Presidents to be selected on the total votes gained at an election.

2. States to deal exclusively on their special elections.

It will be seen how this item will proceed for 2020.

D_G, you was confident on the electoral college votes all through the election process. If Hillary had won, this pending legislation would have never came light. This is like changing the rules when the game started. 

Sour grapes.  If the Dems felt so strongly about this they should have done so long ago.

Why doesn't Hillary explain why Bill told her team that they were going to lose, if they didn't change their messaging in the Midwest?  This after Rendell warned them that there was a silent Trump vote in that state.

Why doesn't Hillary tell us why she was so arrogant that she had WI in the bag that she didn't even go there to campaign.  Yes that is the reason why some in that state said that they didn't vote for her, as they were insulted that she took them for granted.

So now they lost, according to the rules, they now want to change the rules.  Just a few months ago they were boasting about the wall that they had in the Midwest and how they had the electoral college in the bag.  In fact they even boasted that they didn't need a big state like FL, because now they had VA, CO, and NV in the bag.

Had Trump won the national vote and lost the college, and pulled this stunt they would be rolling on the ground laughing.

The Dems lost WI and MI because they couldn't motivate people in Milwaukee and Detroit to vote.  They spend 3 1/2 years ignoring the black vote and then start screaming "if you don't vote the KKK is going to kill you."

Blacks are saying that they will survive one way or the other because Obama didn't deliver them a life any better than what they had under Bush.

Maybe when the blacks wanted urban issues to receive the same importance as transgender issues Hillary would be president.

Look at how much noise the Dems have made about transgender people and bathrooms!  Now how many votes did that bring them?

Hillary had her hipster campaign team in Brooklyn who don't know blacks and don't know working class whites. They think that their education gives them the right to foist on others their value systems.

Well it turns out that many American voters care about their own lives, and don't give a hoot about the image that the president will have in London or Frankfurt or Beijing, because that doesn't put food on the table, pay the mortgage or pay college bills.

Prince, I always supported the abolishing of the electoral college.

So caribj, why are people still complaining about Trump? They should just shaadup and take what they got for not doing what they should. I said this was gonna happen especially when you said blacks won't go out to vote or vote against Hillary and it's heading that way.

I don't think the democrats will succeed in abolishing the electoral college. 

So for over 200 years the Constitution of the United States stipulated that elections are decided by the Electoral College and election results were accepted.  Now that Trump wins, they want to get rid of it.

There is a reason why the founding fathers put this into the constitution.  It is easy to rig a "winner takes all" election.  Proportional representation by states would mean that they have to rig all of the states, all of the time to win.  Two states Maine and Nebraska have the winner takes all method.

Trump is president. Those who are complaining and going to get psychiatric help need to be screaming at Hillary. She ran a lousy campaign based on false assumptions.

She let Trump dominate the agenda, thinking that his crudeness would be rejected by the voters.  Her husband argued with her campaign team that their messaging was wrong and that they needed to focus on economic bread and butter issues.  Being a bunch of Ivy League feminists they thought that it was the college educated whites who would deliver this to Hillary.

Guess what. Trump won 49% of the college educated whites, and Hillary only got 45%.  53% of the white women went with Trump.  Romney won 56%, so Hillary made few inroads into that group.

So now they want the electoral college to go, when it was the electoral college and NOT the popular vote, which gave Obama his mandate.

If those folks weren't hypocrites they should have demanded that the electoral college have been removed after the 2008 election. Yes when Obama won a mandate with 68% of the college, despite only scraping buy with 53% of the votes.

You cannot change the rules just because it didn't work for you THIS time, even as you said NOTHING when on previous occasions it allowed the Dems to claim a mandate, when in fact they scraped by in a divided nation!

Bibi and Caribny made two great points. The folks who disagree should read them carefully. To add, Hillary blamed Comey and then blame Obama for not doing enough to stop the investigation. Then she settled on blaming Comey alone to look good in Obama's eyes. All this blaming put Hillary in an awkward position.

..The electoral college is antiquated. In a popular vote all states come into play and every citizen's vote  is counted and democracy is conserved. Democrats do not have the votes to carry it at t his time but in time even republicans will want it since generation z will mean white people are a minority of the electorate so every area would want to be counted.

Hamilton has clearly stated reasons for it and those are obsolete. It is also not easy to rig state controlled elections.

Just remember that the population is shifting from the Midwest and the Northeast to the South, and TX is a huge beneficiary of this. 

So don't be too sure that the Dems will always have the national vote advantage. In fact the only reason why they do is because of CA, where there is a huge population, and lopsided support for the Dems. Take out CA and its likely that Trump won the national vote.  At some point the GOP will make more inroads into the Latin and Asian vote, and at that point the Dems will lose support.

In fact whereas Trump did better than Hillary among white non college educated than among the white educated, among non whites Trump did better among the college educated.  This suggests to me that the more upwardly mobile Asians and Latinos are more disposed to the GOP.

The fact that the Dems only want to do it now, when they don't have the votes is why it is pure sour grapes.  They had the votes in 2009, so if they felt strongly about it they should have moved to replace the electoral college then.  They didn't because they enjoyed the fact that a 68% share of the seats made it look like a landslide victory, even though Obama had only won around 53% of the votes.

I suggest that the Dems focus on what ails the party. The Dem base didn't show up, and they lost aspects of it to Trump. No point wailing that it was only about white racism because Trump made minor inroads even into the black, Latin, and Asian votes.  While Comey clearly played a role that was only because the voters didn't really like Hillary, and were looking for an excuse to ditch her.

Interesting that Trump isn't ranting about rigged elections since he won.

If Hillary won we all know that Trump goons would have been engaged in even more racist violence than they currently are.

That has no bearing on the fairness of the system. Texas should count as does VT or CA. It is about what is right.

And if it was right then why only now the Dems include it.  I am not arguing the merits, or demerits.  I am just saying that people shouldn't be hypocritical about this. had Hillary won the electoral vote, and Trump the national we know fully well that the Dems would have condemned him had he wanted the college abolished.

The rich white liberal elites are in shock that they lost. They are out of touch with their base, so have no idea how to message to them. They view their base as mere statistics, and don't even know the nuances.

These are people who think that they own certainly voting blocs. Well sufficient blacks stayed home in Milwaukee and Detroit to cost Hillary WI and MI. And they didn't vote because there was no Obama at the head of the ticket and they didn't see what relevance Hillary had for them. Even if Obama did nothing at least they had the psychic pride of a black family in the White House.......But this election was about two old white people...so what!  Back to normal!

Electoral college is for them old timer people. Scrap it.

Democrats got scared after Trump told his supporters they were going to rig the elections against them. The Obama Gang, simply changed their minds about rigging. Look how the Obama Gang bamboozle Bernie, now Bernie is going try again in 2020. He hanging on to his suporters. 

If you believe that then I do not think you are a silly conspiracy theorist. I am forced to conclude on a diagnosis of senility.  Bernie has retreated back to being and Independent so I hope he stays there.

The Electoral College will never be abolished. It is indeed about as Carib says  "sour grapes". If the Democrats had won, this discussion would not have been entertained. Remember it was the same situation with Gore v Bush, where Gore got more popular votes.

This is a principle built into the Constitution by the Founding Fathers. I believe it takes 2/3 of Congress to do so...the Republicans will oppose and Democrats from small states will oppose. ...its not happening. 

Eventually it will happen. It is a perennial complaint of republicans and democrats because it leaves too much of the country outside the spectrum for consideration in the elections. Minus the electoral college every vote count and every district count and every state count so no one can call the election per state or imagine there is one state that matters more than others. Sometime very soon this will be the case.

Two things to consider - Hillary won California by 2 million votes and New York by 1.5 million. Those people feel that their votes don;t count.

Think about 2 Senators for Maine and 2 for California. If California had 12 Senators to Maine's 1 think of who would control the Senate and not block legislation.

In all the discussion over the electoral college we have to consider does one man one vote maker sense?

To Caribny's point, more young people are migrating to urban areas than the reverse. It is the baby boomers who're moving to the rural areas and they tend to be more conservative as they grow older. Next election cycle there will be a lot of older voters who will be missing (6 feet under)0 and more millennials.

2 of the last 5 Elections the candidate with more votes lost the Presidency. If it happens 4 out of 10 times or 6 out of 10 times will it still make sense to have the Electoral College. California and New York probably contribute to 1/5th of the nation's economy or more and they don't matter. You know who matters the barn resident and trailer people who have Ivy Leaguers and Hollywood types and Money market people and CEOs. What do they produce? In fact if all those jobs come back you know who will get them? Robots, not those who voted Trump. That will be a laff.

Could Electoral College Elect Clinton?

Q: Can the Electoral College elect Hillary Clinton on Dec. 19?
A: Yes, it may be constitutionally possible; but no, it will not happen, according to election experts.
FULL ANSWER

A Change.org petition, now signed by more than 4.3 million people, encourages members of the Electoral College to cast their votes for Hillary Clinton when the college meets on Dec. 19. The petition argues that Donald Trump is “unfit to serve” and that “Secretary Clinton WON THE POPULAR VOTE and should be President.”

“If they all vote the way their states voted, Donald Trump will win,” the petition states. “However, they can vote for Hillary Clinton if they choose. Even in states where that is not allowed, their vote would still be counted, they would simply pay a small fine – which we can be sure Clinton supporters will be glad to pay! We are calling on the Electors to ignore their states’ votes and cast their ballots for Secretary Clinton.”

A number of our readers reached out to us by phone and email and asked if it was true that members of the Electoral College are not bound to vote for the candidate who won a majority of votes in their state, and specifically whether the Electoral College could actually give the presidency to Clinton over Trump.
Let’s back up a bit and explain how the Electoral College works, and why — an issue we addressed in 2008 in an article that has gotten a lot of views recently.

As we explained then, when U.S. citizens go to the polls to “elect” a president, they are in fact voting for a particular slate of electors. The electors, selected based on which party’s candidate wins the most votes in a state, meet in their respective states 41 days after the popular election. There, they cast a ballot for president and a second for vice president. In every state but Maine and Nebraska, the candidate who wins the most votes (that is, a plurality) in the state is supposed to receive all of the state’s electoral votes.

Because candidates can win some states by wide margins and others by a slim one, it is possible for a candidate to win the Electoral College vote even if he or she loses the national popular vote. Indeed that has happened three times in U.S. history, most recently in 2000 when George W. Bush lost the popular vote by about 540,000 votes to Al Gore, but won the electoral vote, 271 to 266. (Also, in 1824, John Quincy Adams was elected president even though Andrew Jackson received more popular and electoral votes.)

And the popular vote winner may not be the same as the electoral winner again this year. Absentee votes are still being counted, but as of Nov. 15, Clinton was winning the popular vote tally by more than 775,000 votes, even as Trump was handily winning the Electoral College tally.

Why is there an Electoral College? As we wrote in our 2008 story, most of the nation’s founders were actually rather afraid of democracy, and wanted an extra layer beyond the direct election of the president. As Alexander Hamilton writes in “The Federalist Papers,” the Constitution is designed to ensure “that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” The point of the Electoral College is to preserve “the sense of the people,” while at the same time ensuring that a president is chosen “by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice.”

In modern practice, the Electoral College is mostly a formality. It is true, as the National Archives and Records Administration notes, that there is “no Constitutional provision or Federal law that requires Electors to vote according to the results of the popular vote in their states.” But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1952 that states could require electors to take a pledge to support the party’s presidential and vice presidential nominees from its national convention. And many do. Some even prescribe fines of $500 to $1,000 to so-called “faithless electors” for not voting for the party’s nominee, or allow them to be replaced by an alternate.
Whether those pledges or fines could be upheld by the Supreme Court is unclear. 

As the National Archives notes, “No Elector has ever been prosecuted for failing to vote as pledged.” In addition, more than 20 states do not have a state law or party or state pledge requiring electors to back the candidates with the most votes in their state.

“There is a lot of uncertainty because it is such a scarce occurrence,” Chris Hughes, a staff attorney at FairVote, a voting-rights advocacy group, told us.

According to FairVote, there have been 157 “faithless electors” in the history of the U.S. But even that figure is deceptively high. Of those, 71 votes were changed because the original candidate died before the Electoral College cast its votes. In all, the group states, “82 electoral votes were changed on the personal initiative of the elector.” None has affected the outcome of a presidential election.

The most recent example occurred in 2004 when an anonymous elector from Minnesota, pledged to vote for Democrat John Kerry, cast a presidential vote instead for Kerry’s running mate, John Edwards, some believe by mistake. In 2000, a Democratic elector from the District of Columbia declined to cast her vote “to protest the lack of congressional representation for Washington, DC,” FairVote notes.

“Presidential Electors are theoretically free to vote as their consciences dictate, something the founders anticipated Electors would indeed do under Hamilton’s Electoral College invention,” Laurence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School, told us via email.

Tribe said the constitutionality of imposing a fine on a “faithless elector” is “open to doubt, and it is even more doubtful that a court would compel any Elector to be ‘faithful’ to the State’s winner-take-all outcome. Nor is it likely that the Vice President, who presides over the process of opening the Electors’ ballots and counting the votes cast by the 538 Electors, would feel free to ‘correct’ a faithless Elector’s vote. So, in theory, if enough Electors pledged to Mr. Trump decline to make him President-elect and vote instead for Secretary Clinton, she would become the President-elect and would be the 45th President upon taking the Oath of Office on January 20, 2017.”

But Tribe said such a scenario is highly unlikely as a matter of practice, in part because it would likely be opposed by President Obama and Clinton herself.

“In the current situation, where both incumbent President Obama and the candidate who won a popular majority nationwide, Hillary Clinton, have made such a huge point of accepting Donald Trump as the President-elect, and where both Obama and Clinton have repeatedly insisted that such acceptance is vital to the peaceful transition our democracy requires, I frankly cannot imagine either of them supporting the proposed move to have the Electoral College elect the former Secretary of State on December 19,” Tribe said. “And, without their support, the move seems doomed to fail.”

Indeed, Obama said at a press conference on Nov. 14, “Look, the people have spoken. Donald Trump will be the next President, the 45th President of the United States.”

In her concession speech, Clinton said, “Donald Trump is going to be our president” and added that Americans “respect and cherish” the “rule of law.”

There is another huge practical hurdle to the scenario called for in the petition.The electors are chosen by the state parties. They are usually people heavily involved in the campaign of their party’s nominee or active in the state party.

“The electors are mostly people connected to the political party leadership in their states,” Richard Pildes, a professor of constitutional law at New York University School of Law, told us via email. “So if you try to picture how this might happen, it would have to be the party leadership in some group of states that is convinced to abandon Trump.”

Kermit Roosevelt, professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, put it succinctly. He said that while there is “no clear requirement in the Constitution that electors vote for the candidate they’re pledged to … it’s very unlikely that defections will happen now.”

Sources
Change.org. Petition: “Electoral College: Make Hillary Clinton President on December 19.”

The Electoral College was a flaw in our democracy

Vishnu, why now and not last year and the years before? You're acting like Hillary to blame her loss on Comey when it's her fault. What would have happened if Hillary had won by the electoral college votes? Do you think this legislation would see the light of day? No. It's a matter of convenience for the Democratic party. 

The current system meant that effort and money was spent in about 11 states.  The Democrats can now blame the syytem which they benefited from in the past.  Suddenly, it's bad that they lost with little under a million more votes.  If this was in place, it would have likely not change the outcome as Trump would have worked more in NY and Ca to narrow the gap.

Listen bannas, Hillary was in for a trouncing, current system or Proportional Rep system!  You Liberals put together a flawed candidate and suffered!

At one time the constitution also had blacks as 3/5 of a human, it could be changed

It hasn't been talked much before because this requires ammending the constitution - and you need two-thirds of the States voting on it. That won't happen as the smaller States won't vote for it.

However if it happens more often then it will become something people will talk about.

the argument about why now and why not raise it before is specious. BTW it has only happened to the Democratic Candidate in the history of Presidential elections - something to think about.

The Democrats have won the last 3 general elections popular votes and they have a majority of 0 in the House; 0 in the Senate; only 19 of 50 States Governors and roughly the same in States legislators. Plus thye will be out-voted 5 to 4 on the Supreme Court and remember three Democrats on the Supreme Court are in their 80s.

The USA is dominated in terms of political office by Republicans.

@ Cobra, them is some jokers!!  Trump was winning either system!

Go ahead and change it. Fact of the matter, Trump won more Black and Hispanic votes than Romney! 

Kari think also of this. Many in CA and NY who might have voted for Trump didn't vote, because they didn't think that their votes count.  And don't think that these Trump people exist in NY.  Loads upstate, and anyone who still bellows "Rudy, Rudy, Rudy" and who thinks that the NY Post is a good paper would have voted Trump.

Also note that Hillary only won 3 of the top 10 states by population.   NY and IL have slow growing populations.  TX is benefitting from massive migration from CA, and FL from NY.  TX, GA, NC, and FL are benefitting from immigration of US citizens (voters).   The growth in NY and CA is from immigrants (non voters).

Don't cry scrap the electoral college and then say otherwise if the situation is reversed one day.

Baseman why are you so proud that Trump lost 92% of the black vote and 70% of the Latino and Asian votes?

The states can decide to go by congressional district as a step in that direction.

So Kari, stop talking jibrish, write your state rep and just do it!!  Your eloooogated epistles on GNI is an absolute waste of time!

I don't see a Fed mandate coming down, it will be resisted at the state level.  Each state can do something themselves.  I don't see the Red states doing it, Blues, be my guest!!

Wow some ridiculous arguments on this thread.  Folks it is never too late to do the right thing.  It is not a question of sour grapes.  How did the Democrats BENEFIT from the current system in the past?  Please answer this question. Who cares if you win an electoral landslide if you lost the popular vote...which was never the case for the Democrats, by the way.

It is a good thing that this is now brought up, it will show how backwards the USA is.  And give me a break about founding fathers!  In those days soldiers use to line up in a battlefield and slaughter each other.  Oh, an slaves were property not human beings.

The largest democracy in the world is decided by popular vote...ask Baseman, no wonder he got his a$$ chased out LOL.

This is the fifth time a candidate has won the popular vote but lost the election.  I am a firm believer in "not because we have always done it this way, that is how it should be done'.  The reason why the electoral college was implemented by our founders was to get candidates to visit states that were not really popular.  Logical thinking supports the idea that the popular vote makes more sense. 

However, this might be a tough one to get done.

Why the democrats do not haul them rass.  When the Electoral College was wuking fuh them, they did not complain.

Them like the PNC - GECOM rig when it does not work for them and when they win - GECOM good.

Of the 5 times the winner of the popular vote lost the Electoral vote (and none by large margins) they were all Democratic candidates - never a Republican candidate ho suffered this.

The election using the Electoral college method to determine the President basically says the known big States of NY, CA, IL for Democrats and TX, IN for Republicans don't matter. Just campaign and pander to the needs of the swing States - traditionally Rust Belt States. Their issues are jobs which leads to immigration and Trade Agreements.

You now see why Donald Trump won these States. Hillary did not want to alienate Muslims in america and around the world who CAN help fight ISIS and AL Qaeda terrorism. She ginned up new technologies to replace manufacturing jobs that won't come back (cheaper labor overseas and technology). Finally she ran away from sensible Trade deals like TPP and did not talk about changing NAFTA and let Americans know that china revalued its currency and stopped manipulation its currency to cheat (though State subsidies remained....just like american State subsidies to certain industries).

That's why the deciding rust belt states Trump voters are in for a rough ride - nothing Trump said he'd do will come to pass - including rounding up illegals more than Obama is doing. He will compound the deficits with tax breaks for all including the wealthy.