“[T]he justifications for the Electoral College are just as valid now as they were in 1788.” - Indeed, which is why I keep reiterating, "Times change, principles don't."
Left-wing candidates for president are lining up to call for the elimination of the Electoral College.
That’s the constitutional system through which small-population states retain influence in a national election.
Many Democrats want to elect the president with a national popular vote.
One such individual is Democratic hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Democrats have complained that their candidate lost in 2000 and 2016 despite accumulating more popular votes nationwide.
He says that’s precisely why activists hate it.
It takes 270 Electoral College votes to win, because there are 538 electors.
A plan to have the nation ruled by California and New York would have “horrified” the writers of the Constitution, he argues.
“The Framers, who had just fought a desperate war for their independence from Great Britain, were extremely suspicious of executive power. So not only did they attempt to limit the power of the presidency in the Constitution, but to make sure that the election of the president would not be dependent on the whims, passions, and prejudices of the electorate. It is specifically designed to be anti-democratic,” he writes.
“Those who are calling for the repeal of the Electoral College (or for packing the Supreme Court, or for basing the U.S. Senate on population instead of equal suffrage), do not oppose it because it is not working. They oppose it because it is working,” he says.