Rep. Jamie Raskin, Maryland Democrat and a member of the House Jan. 6 choose committee, known as the Electoral College a “danger” to the nation that ought to be scrapped in favor of a direct popular vote to elect the president.
Congress final Friday handed laws altering the arcane legislation that governs the certification of a presidential contest, however Mr. Raskin instructed CBS that it doesn’t go almost far sufficient.
“The Electoral College now – which has given us five popular-vote losers as president in our history, twice in this century alone – has become a danger, not just to democracy, but to the American people. It was a danger on January 6,” Mr. Raskin, Maryland Democrat, mentioned in an interview on “Face the Nation” that aired Sunday.
“There are so many curving byways and nooks and crannies in the Electoral College, that there are opportunities for a lot of strategic mischief,” he mentioned. “We should elect the president the way we elect governors, senators, mayors, representatives, everybody else. Whoever gets the most votes wins.”
The House handed an overhaul of the Electoral Count Act as a part of its large, end-of-the-year spending invoice after the Senate accepted equivalent wording Thursday.
The measure amends the 1887 legislation to make it tougher for future presidential losers to cease the certification of the outcome by Congress, as President Trump inspired his supporters to do on Jan. 6, 2021
SEE ALSO: Raskin says Jan. 6 committee wanted DOJ’s ‘panoply’ of resources to proceed its work towards Trump
Mr. Raskin cited Thomas Jefferson, saying that he deplored the reverence with which some individuals take a look at the unique handiwork of the framers when they need to be trying to their very own expertise.
”The Framers have been nice, and so they have been patriots, however they didn’t get pleasure from expertise that we’ve lived,” he mentioned.
“We know that the Electoral College doesn’t fit anymore, which is why I’m a big supporter of the National Popular Vote interstate compact,” he mentioned.
The NPV is a deal that many states have signed onto up to now decade.
It does an end-run across the Electoral College by committing its signatory states to grant their votes to whoever will get essentially the most votes nationwide. It solely kicks in when states whose mixed Electoral College votes attain a 270-vote majority have signed on.
Fifteen states and the District of Columbia, with a mixed 195 electoral votes, have joined the compact as of June.
Because the Constitution permits for state legislatures the ability to appoint presidential electors, there’s a likelihood that the NPV could also be upheld by the courts.
Save Our States (SOS), which fashioned in 2009 to push again on this effort to abolish the Electoral College references Alexander Hamilton’s declare in “The Federalist Papers” that “if [the Electoral College] be not perfect, it is at least excellent.”
“The NPV plan is state legislation. States commit to ignore their own voters and instead give away their electoral votes based on the national popular vote,” SOS says on its web site.
The Republican Party, in its national platform, helps the Electoral College and opposes the National Popular Vote marketing campaign.
“We oppose the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact and any other scheme to abolish or distort the procedures of the Electoral College,” it states on the GOP platform.”
“An unconstitutional effort to impose National Popular Vote would be a grave threat to our federal system and a guarantee of corruption, as every ballot box in every state would offer a chance to steal the presidency,”
Republicans have urged state legislatures which have voted for this proposal to rescind their approval.
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