Jamie Raskin Says It’s Time to End the Electoral College

“We must always elect the president the best way we elect governors, senators, mayors, [and] representatives,” Raskin stated.

On Sunday, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) stated lawmakers in Congress ought to start the method of abolishing the Electoral Faculty, describing the mechanism as a hazard to the American individuals as a result of plethora of how it may be exploited.

In feedback on CBS’s “Face the Nation” program, Raskin stated that presidents ought to be elected by a preferred vote mannequin as a substitute.

“We must always elect the president the best way we elect governors, senators, mayors, representatives, all people else — whoever will get essentially the most votes wins,” Raskin said.

Raskin famous that different nations reject the framework of the Electoral Faculty. “We spend a whole lot of tens of millions of {dollars} yearly exporting American democracy to different nations, and the one factor they by no means come again to us with is the concept, ‘Oh, that Electoral Faculty that you’ve, that’s so nice, we expect we are going to undertake that too,’” he stated.

Notably, the Electoral Faculty system offers a number of avenues for a presidential candidate to subvert the desire of the individuals, the Maryland Democrat defined.

“There are such a lot of curving byways and nooks and crannies within the Electoral Faculty that there are alternatives for lots of strategic mischief,” Raskin said.

Earlier this month, as a part of the omnibus spending bundle, each homes of Congress handed the Electoral Rely Reform Act, laws that may restrict methods for lawmakers to hunt to subvert the end result of the Electoral Faculty vote; the invoice is essentially a response to actions by Republicans in early 2021, when members of the occasion aligned with former President Donald Trump to problem electors’ votes in a number of states that Trump misplaced to President Joe Biden.

“I’m for [the Electoral Count Reform Act], and that’s the very least we are able to do and we should do,” Raskin said. “It’s vital, but it surely’s not remotely adequate.”

Raskin, a member of the January 6 committee, added:

The Electoral Faculty now — which has given us 5 popular-vote losers as president in our historical past, twice on this century alone — has change into a hazard, not simply to democracy, however to the American individuals. It was a hazard on January 6.

Though abolishing the Electoral Faculty would require a constitutional modification, Raskin is much from alone in his views. A majority of Individuals help ending the Electoral Faculty system and changing it with a preferred vote mannequin as a substitute.

In keeping with polling this previous summer time from Pew Analysis Heart, 63 p.c of Individuals again a preferred vote methodology for selecting the president, whereas simply 35 p.c say they need to preserve the present system in place.

This price of help is the best Pew Analysis Heart has seen on the query since at the very least the 12 months 2000.