But one Republican who supported Romney was furious at the idea.
“The Electoral College is a disaster for democracy,” Donald Trump wrote on social media, before calling on Americans to “march on Washington and stop this travesty.” The post will eventually be deleted.
Four years later, of course, no one in these Americas was more enthusiastic about the power of the electoral college than Trump. He lost the popular vote and won the White House in 2016 because he narrowly won Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania and won the Electoral College.
4 years later that, he once again tried to narrow the electorate in his favor, encouraging a march on Washington to stop the farce of his Democratic opponent winning both the popular and electoral votes. did. It didn’t work.
The 2020 election also ultimately hinged on three states, albeit in different states. Taking away Joe Biden’s narrow wins in Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin would deprive him of a majority of the electorate.In fact, you rob Any Electoral College victory. These he flips three states and the election ends in a 269-269 tie for her. And here you thought, the aftermath of 2020 couldn’t be any worse.
Looking ahead to November, President Trump on Tuesday endorsed a proposal to avoid such a scenario this year. He praised Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen (Republican) for supporting legislation that would change how the state allocates electoral votes. The state winner gets his two votes, and his remaining three votes are no longer given to the winner of each congressional district. Instead, all five electoral votes would go to the candidate who won overall, the Republican Party in every election since 1968.
“Most Nebraskans have wanted to go back to this system for a long time because 48 other states have done so,” said Trump, now an ardent supporter of the Electoral College. wrote on social media. “This is what the founders intended and it’s the right thing for Nebraska.”
Pillen echoed that point in a statement, saying such changes would “better reflect the founders’ intentions.”
No, it’s not. The process originally established by the Constitution bears no resemblance to the current process, which assigns state legislatures the task of selecting electors to vote for two people who are thought to be effective presidents. If one candidate receives a majority of votes, that candidate becomes president, and the second-place candidate becomes vice president.
This wasn’t a very good system, so the Twelfth Amendment of 1804 made adjustments, including introducing a separate vote for vice president. (You can read the full text here.) But the electors were never intended to reflect the will of the state’s voters.
Over time, most states implemented a system in which elector choices were tied to the popular vote within the state. In most places, that meant a winner-take-all system. In Nebraska and Maine, that meant splitting them up. Each state receives electors for each senator and representative. Nebraska and Maine award Senate electors (two in total) to the statewide winner and the remainder to the winner of each House district.
As a result, these two states would be able to nominate electors for each major party’s candidates, but that doesn’t happen often. Nebraska provided one elector to Democratic candidates in 2008 and 2020. Maine had Republican elections in 2016 and 2020. While this certainly more accurately reflected the will of voters in each state, it had little effect on the disparity between the national popular vote and the electoral vote.
It’s easy to forget how unbalanced these two scales are. Below are the results of a century of presidential elections. The distribution of popular votes across the country is shown in the outer circle, and the resulting distribution of electoral votes is shown in the center pie chart. Notice that the extent of the red and blue regions is significantly different between the outer and inner rings.
You can also look at this another way. The graph below shows the Republican Party’s popular vote share (horizontal axis) and electoral vote share (vertical axis) over the past century. The dotted line indicates a perfect match between the popular vote and the electoral vote. Not all years lie on this line; the farther the popular vote is from 50 percent, the greater the deviation of the electoral vote share from the dotted line.
Changing Nebraska’s rules would not have affected the results in either election, in which the state divided its electors among major party candidates. But if you’re Trump, you can see the benefits. Recapture Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin, align his one congressional district in Nebraska with the statewide vote, and voila! The electors gave her a 270-268 victory.
But what if, on the other hand, we apportioned electors nationally in the same way that Nebraska and Maine allocate them?
The results were a little surprising. Using DailyKos’ calculations of presidential election House district results, in 2016 Trump still won a majority of the electors. The reason is simple. We still give each state two electors for each senator. This means that the disparities that exist in the Senate in red states with smaller populations will be reflected in the newly determined Electoral College.However, if the Nebraska model is in place, the number of electoral votes would be at least a bit It was closer to the popular vote that year (Mr. Trump actually won 57% of the electoral vote, compared to 54% for Trump).
Biden will still win in 2020. The total number of electors under Nebraska’s plan was approximately equal to the national popular turnout. However, Trump still believes he has an advantage. Biden has a 4-point lead in the popular vote and a 3-percentage point advantage in the electoral college. Trump’s 2-point loss in 2016 translates into an 8 percentage point advantage under Nebraska apportionment law. That’s closer than her actual 14 percentage point advantage in the Electoral College, but little consolation for Hillary Clinton.
Trump’s endorsement in Nebraska is simple: It’s a way to win one more electoral vote. It will be interesting to see how Trump would react if the governor of Maine issued the exact same statement as Pillen. Presumably, President Trump will be less enthusiastic about how it reflects the purported intentions of the Founding Fathers.
