Every Democratic Candidate Should Match Elizabeth Warren's Position on the Electoral College

From Esquire

Democrats who are serious about pursuing an ambitious agenda of Medicare for All or a Green New Deal will have to deal with some hard truths. As a constitutional republic, there are some aspects of the American system that are fundamentally undemocratic. The Founders were wary of the common man, and originally the public did not even directly elect their own senators. (Also, in many states only white male landowners could vote.) The Senate remains egregiously undemocratic-six senators from New York, Texas, and California represent about the same number of Human Americans as 62 other senators combined-which is why some on the left have gone so far as to say it should be abolished.

There's certainly no question that the filibuster, a mechanism that has, since the Obama years, been relentlessly abused to bring policymaking to a standstill, has got to go if you want to pass a damn thing. This is not an era of principled opposition from good-faith actors, who take to the floor to read from the phonebook in protest of a bill. You will not get the two-thirds majority for "cloture" (an end to debate) on anything significant. It's an era of Mitch McConnell using procedural mechanisms to block everything, without actually standing up on the floor and filibustering it. Operating in these times requires a cold and calculating use of power, one that respects fundamental American principles while abandoning archaic institutional modes that get in the way of realizing those principles.

In that spirit, every Democrat should be talking about abandoning the Electoral College. Because a state's Electoral Votes are the sum of its senators and representatives, it carries the Senate's undemocratic makeup and amplifies it. We choose to select our presidents in complete disregard of who got more actual votes from Human Americans. Because almost every state dishes out its votes wholesale, and most states lean heavily blue or red, only a few Battleground or Swing States get any attention come general-election time. What about the real, live folks that live in every other corner of the country?

This was the point Elizabeth Warren seized on Monday night while making her case for abolishing the College.

It's exactly right that Warren places this discussion in the larger context of election reform and the restoration of voting rights in the face of voter-suppression laws targeting voters of color. It is fundamentally about the principle of one person, one vote. And she wisely focused on the fact that her Mississippi audience last night gets entirely ignored during a presidential election.

"Every vote matters," Warren said, "and the way we can make that happen is that we can have national voting. And that means get rid of the Electoral College and everybody counts. Everybody. I think everybody ought to come and have to ask for your vote. What do you think?"

The common refrain is that without the College, rural Americans will have no say in things and be trampled by urban areas. That's the argument former Maine Governor Paul LePage made recently, except he said the quiet parts out loud:

It has always been clear what the purpose of the College is. It does not give "rural" voters a voice-it gives each one of them a voice many times louder than an someone who lives in a more densely-populated area. It's no coincidence that the people getting a louder voice under the status quo tend to have a certain complexion. LePage is suffering from a classic case of "when you're used to privilege, equality feels like oppression." It makes white people's votes count extra is not actually a very good argument. And if it makes you feel better, The Founders realized the College was a mistake later in their own lifetimes.

Above all that, the results over the last few decades have been telling. Republicans have won three of the last five presidential elections, but only once won the popular vote. The undemocratic injustice of those results has filtered down into the judicial system and the regulatory regime, as presidents who do not represent the majority of citizens choose judges for lifetime appointments and Cabinet secretaries to implement the policy that governs our lives. That time must be over, particularly now that the College has served up a man who's made it his business to trample the American republic. Abolish it.

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