Lawrence Lessig’s new op-ed in the Washington Post argues against the idea “that the person who lost the popular vote this year must nonetheless become our president.” (Paywalled version here, free version here.) Lessig points out that the electoral college results have already been ignored twice in U.S. history — in 1824 and 1876.
The Constitution says nothing about “winner take all.” It says nothing to suggest that electors’ freedom should be constrained in any way…They were to be citizens exercising judgment, not cogs turning a wheel.
Complaining that the electoral college weights the votes in Wyoming roughly four times as heavily as the votes in Michigan, Lessig argues that the popular vote should be respected, and that the authors of the U.S. Constitution “left the electors free to choose. They should exercise that choice by leaving the election as the people decided it: in Clinton’s favor.” Meanwhile, Politico is reporting that six electors, “mostly former Bernie Sanders supporters who hail from Washington state and Colorado,” are already urging electors pledged to Clinton and Trump to instead coalesce around “a consensus pick like Mitt Romney or John Kasich.” And the ethics lawyers for both President Obama and President Bush both told one liberal site “that if Trump continues to retain ownership over his sprawling business interests by the time the electors meet on December 19, they should reject Trump.”
Finally, from the original submission:
Even Donald Trump has called the Electoral College a “total sham.” Is it time for the Electoral College to reflect the popular vote?
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