The chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission has raised new concerns about the legitimacy of elections like that of President Trump, who lost the popular vote but won an Electoral College victory.
Ellen Weintraub, who has stepped up criticism of Trump’s claims of voter fraud, said she is worried that Americans will lose faith in elections where the Electoral College and not the popular vote rules.
Appearing on MSNBC, she said that when she explains the U.S. system to foreign observers, they appear confused. Weintraub said she explains that typically a presidential candidate wins both the electoral and popular vote “and everyone’s happy.”
But she said that hasn’t been the case in some recent elections, though she did not name Trump’s 2016 election or that of former President George W. Bush in 2000.
“More recently that hasn’t been happening all the time,” she said on All In with Chris Hayes. “And I worry, that just like these other, where people from other countries were confused about it, that people in our own country will come to feel that the result is not legitimate.”
Thanks, @chrislhayes, for inviting me on to talk about faith in democracy, the myth of voter fraud, and the crisis at the @FEC (just don’t call us “undermanned”). @allinwithchris @MSNBC https://t.co/vIiRGYsNU2
— Ellen L Weintraub (@EllenLWeintraub) August 31, 2019
MSNBC host Chris Hayes added, “Or just.”
His website wrote of her appearance, “FEC Chair expresses concern that the Electoral College is undermining Americans’ confidence in U.S. elections.”
The system was devised by the nation’s Founders to block states with huge populations from discounting those with smaller populations. Also, in the 1880s, two presidents won the electoral vote but not the popular vote.
Weintraub heads a newly defanged FEC that has become so politically divided that few enforcement actions have been agreed to. On Friday, the vice chair of the agency resigned, leaving the FEC without a quorum to vote.
FEC chair Ellen Weintraub says Pres. Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud undermine people’s faith in the system.
“The end result is that it becomes harder to vote and more citizens end up disenfranchised…[Our democracy] will be stronger if we can get more people to vote.” pic.twitter.com/ZvnEvPz24H— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) August 20, 2019
All of the three sitting members are operating on expired terms, the longest being Weintraub.
David Warrington, president of the Republican National Lawyers Association, criticized Weintraub’s concerns about the Electoral College.
“Seventeen years into a six year term, Ellen Weintraub has now decided that she knows better than the Founders and that the Electoral College undermines the legitimacy of American elections,” he said today in response to her MSNBC comments.
“If she wants to be a political activist, she should immediately resign and join the democratic process rather than try to control it or remake it according to her own whims from her perch at the FEC,” he added.
