Editorial: Congress must update Electoral Count Act to prevent another coup attempt against President Trump
Congress has the power to fix the Electoral College mess by adding a 3/5 vote requirement in Presidential elections. To the extent the Electoral College has out-lived its utility, Congress can remove it from the Constitution, as it has already begun to do, and move toward an actual election system that reflects the popular vote.
The Electoral College has been an impediment to the electoral process for a long time, limiting its use to some of the least populated regions of the country, with the result that many Americans have a hard time participating in the electoral process.
There was a time when it was assumed that the electoral college would be the deciding vote in the presidential election. Voters did not want the vote to be decided by an outlier, especially when that outlier was a presidential candidate who was not viewed as popular. The Electoral College became the “great equalizer,” making it less likely that a candidate of questionable popularity could win a national election, regardless of his or her appeal among the more populous states.
The Electoral College, with its fixed rules, has helped ensure that presidential elections have always tended toward choosing a candidate who appeals to a broad base of voters, because that base has a larger pool of votes than the vote of an individual voter within a state would, which has long made the Electoral College system an effective tool for electing presidents, even though its effect is to make every election between candidates who are popular and not popular appear close.
Now, however, we have a president who is not popular, and he is not viewed as being popular by some voters, and this can happen because of the Electoral College. The Electoral College has created a situation in which a popular president has been unable to beat a unpopular one, even though it is an unwise use of the electoral power of the people to allow a candidate seen as not popular to win, while another candidate of the same unappealing character is
