Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren has a brilliant idea. We should get rid of the Electoral College.
Warren made the statement on CNN, claiming that “Every vote matters” and that candidates would have to campaign more in states that weren’t “battleground states” if there was no Electoral College.
Warren ignored the fact that getting rid of the Electoral College would cause a vast over-representation of people living in heavily populated areas, like cities, whose opinions would overshadow those living in small towns or rural areas and that candidates would likely only campaign in these areas.
The elimination of the Electoral College would definitely benefit Democrats, though, who rely on states with huge populations, like California, for their victories.
Take a look:
Fox News reported:
Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren said she supports eliminating the U.S. Electoral College during a town hall broadcast on Monday night.
“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,” Warren told an audience at the historically black college Jackson State University in Mississippi.
Warren’s statement on CNN came after an audience member asked the Massachusetts senator about voting rights and so-called voter suppression laws.
CBS News gave more details:
Warren noted that during the general election, "Presidential candidates don't come to places like Mississippi. ... They also don't come to places like California and Massachusetts, right? Because we're not the battleground states."
Since 2000, Democrats have seen two of their presidential candidates, Al Gore and Hillary Clinton, win the popular vote only to lose the Electoral College -- and the election. Because most states distribute electoral votes through a winner-take-all system, candidates tend to pay much less attention in the general election to states that are either deeply Democratic or deeply Republican, focusing instead on the battlegrounds where the outcome is uncertain. The group FairVote noted that by November 2016, over 90 percent of the electoral activity in the campaign had taken place in just 11 battleground states.
However, moving to a popular vote system could negatively impact a different set of voters. Candidates would likely focus more on heavily populated urban areas and less on those who don't live in cities.
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