It looks like Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., is trying to outdo the other 2020 Democratic presidential candidates who say the Electoral College must go.
But rather than just talk about eliminating the current method by which presidents are elected in the United States, the New York lawmaker is co-sponsoring a Constitutional Amendment mandating that all presidential elections be decided by the national popular vote.
“Our democracy is built on the principle of one person, one vote,” Gillibrand’s official Twitter account said this week. “It can’t function until we restore that principle. It’s time to abolish the Electoral College.”
The joint resolution, which was introduced in the Senate Tuesday afternoon, is being spearheaded by Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii. He is joined in his efforts by Gillibrand and Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.
“Californians are consistently under-represented when voting for president because of the Electoral College,” said Feinstein’s social media account Tuesday. “Each elector stands for 712,000 Californians, but smaller states get the same vote for only 195,000 voters. That’s simply unfair. We must eliminate the Electoral College.”
Gillibrand’s involvement in the resolution marks the boldest stance that any of the two dozen Democratic presidential hopefuls have staked out on the issue. Some of the candidates have suggested only that it’s time we talk about doing away with the Electoral College.
Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., for example, said she is “open to the discussion” of eliminating it. “There’s no question that the popular vote has been diminished in terms of making the final decision about who’s the president of the United States and we need to deal with that,” she said in March.
Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., also said elsewhere, “I believe very simply that in presidential elections, the person with the most votes should be the president of the United States. But I want to tell you, for us ever to get to a point where we can address that issue, we have got to win this next election under the rules that are there now.”
Other candidates outright called for its abolition.
“My view is that every vote matters. And the way we can make that happen is that we can have national voting, and that means get rid of the Electoral College,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said last month.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee also said that it is an “archaic” relic of a “bygone age.”
“We need progress,” he said. “We also need democracy, which is one person, one vote. I’ve never understood why people who want to block progress like [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell get one and half votes and people who want [to] go defeat climate change only get one.”
South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg also said in January that, “we’ve got to repair our democracy. The Electoral College needs to go because it’s made our society less and less democratic.”
Gillibrand, however, is going a lot further than anyone else in the current 2020 Democratic field. And maybe with good reason: She has been lagging badly in the polls. Maybe this is just the thing to juice her numbers. Because she surely isn’t planning to get 38 states to ratify that.
