OPINIONS: Time for the Electoral College to go?

By ROBERT REICH
Inequality Media
Civic Action

In the 2000 election, George W. Bush won the White House despite losing the popular vote by 543,000 votes.

It happened again in 2016, when Donald Trump won despite getting nearly 2.9 million fewer votes.

And this fall, we’re staring down the barrel of another election in which Trump could win while losing the popular vote.

THERE IS A SOLUTION
It’s all because of the utterly senseless institution of the Electoral College.

But friends, there is a solution that could save us from such an outcome in November. It’s called the National Popular Vote Compact.

The National Popular Vote Compact is a legal agreement among participating states to allocate their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. Once enough states opt in to add up to 270 electoral votes, the Electoral College becomes irrelevant — and we’re already up to 205!

DESTRUCTIVE IMPACT
The 2000 and 2016 elections, in which Republicans won the White House despite losing the national popular vote, have had incalculably destructive effects on the nation and indeed the world.

These two elections led directly to the far-right Supreme Court super-majority we have today that overturned Roe v. Wade, gutted of the Voting Rights Act, ended affirmative action, and more.

George W. Bush’s two disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan killed an estimated half a million people while destabilizing global security and squandering an immeasurable amount of U.S. credibility around the world.

On top of that, the Trump and Bush tax cuts cost the nation more than $10 trillion to date.

WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE
If not for those tax cuts and the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, we would have enough money right now to end hunger and homelessness in America, provide free public college to every working family, accelerate the transition to clean energy, give healthcare to the 25 million Americans still without health insurance, and more — all while running a surplus.

Polls show that this election will once again go down to the wire and will likely be decided by a few thousand people in battleground states like Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. The rest of our votes are largely irrelevant.

But we have a great chance to end the senseless Electoral College system before the 2024 election. All we need is five to six more states to join the National Popular Vote Compact, and the current Electoral College fiasco will be sent to the dustbin of history.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: States that enacted a law to join the National Popular vote Interstate Compact: Maryland, New Jersey, Illinois, Hawaii, Washington, Massachusetts, District of Columbia, Vermont, California, Rhode Island, New York, Connecticut, Colorado, Delaware, New Mexico, Oregon and Minnesota.)

(Robert Bernard Reich is an American professor, author, lawyer, and political commentator. He worked in the administrations of presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, and served as Secretary of Labor from 1993 to 1997 in the cabinet of President Bill Clinton.)