The Republican move to object to the certification of the 2020 election results on Wednesday has some wondering, even hopeful, if the long-shot bid to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s win will lead to the Electoral College’s demise.
Regardless of whether the effort to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by President Trump and his allies is successful, proponents of abolishing the current Electoral College system have some fresh material.
Noting that only one Republican presidential candidate has won the national popular vote in the last 32 years, a group of GOP House members — Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota, Ken Buck of Colorado, Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Tom McClintock of California, and Chip Roy of Texas — released a statement saying they don’t support objecting to the certification in part because of the precedent it would set.
“They have therefore depended on the electoral college for nearly all presidential victories in the last generation. If we perpetuate the notion that Congress may disregard certified electoral votes — based solely on its own assessment that one or more states mishandled the presidential election — we will be delegitimizing the very system that led Donald Trump to victory in 2016, and that could provide the only path to victory in 2024,” they said.
In 2016, Trump won the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes. Fast-forward four years: Trump lost the Electoral College and the popular vote, this time by more than twice that margin.
With Trump hoping to discredit a 306-232 Electoral College loss, a group of Republicans have devised a plan to stifle its certification in Congress. Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama was the first member of Congress to announce his intention to object and was met with significant support among other Republicans in the House, but it wasn’t until Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri declared his intent to join them did their plan get serious. That’s because at least one member of both chambers is to object to each slate of electors in writing to send both the Senate and House into a two-hour debate, and then they would vote to accept or reject the challenged Electoral College votes, with only a simple majority needed to defeat the challenge.
More senators have followed Hawley, who said he plans to challenge Pennsylvania’s results and possibly more states, including a group of 11 led by Ted Cruz. They are calling for the appointment of an “electoral commission” to carry out an emergency, 10-day audit of the election.
Ray Haynes, a former California state GOP lawmaker, told the Washington Examiner that the current “crisis” wouldn’t be happening with the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. This agreement, which has already been passed in a handful of states nationwide, calls for states to award their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote, thus making the Electoral College less meaningful if states are basing their Electoral College votes strictly on the outcome of the popular vote nationwide.
“The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact was the best solution, both as a conservative and for the country because it avoids unnecessary and unwanted crises that we’re going through right now. I mean, what we’re going through right now, this chaos has been created over the last two months is completely avoidable within the context of the Electoral College, which I support,” he said.
Fifteen states and the District of Columbia, totaling 196 Electoral College votes, have joined the pack. The states are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. However, the states do not currently abide by this compact because there is a stipulation that the agreement will not take effect until enough states agree that their Electoral College votes reach or exceed 270 — the number of Electoral College votes needed to secure the presidency.
The fight to reform or abolish the Electoral College gained more momentum after the 2016 election, and the issue came up again in the 2020 presidential cycle as it appeared Trump could once again win the election while losing the popular vote. Although Biden said he was against eliminating the Electoral College in favor of relying solely on the popular vote, other Democrats he faced in the primary — Sens. Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren — all said they would, according to the Washington Post.
Democrats have been bigger supporters of changing the way the presidential election is conducted in recent years in part because they’ve had more success in the popular vote than they have in the Electoral College in the last couple decades. In both 2000 and 2016, the Republican presidential candidate won the election while losing the popular vote, and the only one to win both in the last 30 years was President George W. Bush in 2004.
Haynes argued that the Electoral College “is harmful to the [Republican] movement over the long term.”
“When we are forced to make our case to the American people, the American people are persuaded by our arguments,” he said.
Election Reformers Network Executive Director Kevin Johnson told the Washington Examiner that the entire 2020 election cycle, not just the last couple weeks, is an indication that “a lot about the Electoral College needs to be fixed.”
His organization does not support the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, instead encouraging states to “allocate their electoral votes proportionally to the top two vote-getters in the state.”
“Among other bombs ready to explode in this system, this election has invented a new one that we might call ‘faithless legislatures,'” Johnson said. “There has been an organized effort to convince and cajole legislators in PA, MI, and elsewhere to name slates of electors contrary to the will of the people in the state. It didn’t happen this year in part because the election wasn’t very close, but we won’t always be so lucky.”
