This is the second time in recent history that the winner of the popular vote did not win enough electoral votes to win the White House.
The unique feature of the Nov. 8 presidential election was the fact that Hillary Clinton won 2.8 million more popular votes than Donald Trump. Not only that, she also won more votes than Donald Trump in Orange County — for the first since FDR was president.
It is worthwhile to re-examine past attempts at abolishing the Electoral College. In 1969, Republican President Richard Nixon supported a push in Congress to abolish the Electoral College, as did his rival in the presidential race, Democrat, Hubert Humphrey a year earlier.
Both were concerned that former Alabama Gov. George Wallace would win some electoral votes and possibly
cause a tie between Mr. Nixon and Mr. Humphrey. As it turned out, Mr. Wallace won five Southern states. He netted 46 electoral votes.
Changing the Electoral College requires an amendment to the Constitution. Two steps are needed for an amendment to pass: A two-thirds majority in the House and Senate, followed by ratification by three-fourths of the states.
Mr. Nixon had supported an amendment crafted by the American Bar Assn. that called for electing the president by popular vote. But, he also proposed the election of a president by a plurality of 40 percent of the electoral vote, instead of the present absolute majority.
The plurality proposal did come to a vote on the floor of the House and it passed overwhelmingly in September 1969. However, the amendment was filibustered and finally killed in the Senate by a group of Southern senators.
They were concerned that states with large populations would dominate elections.
After Hillary Clinton’s loss in November, our outgoing Sen. Barbara Boxer introduced a proposal to abolish the Electoral College.
She said that the time had come to get rid of the “outdated, undemocratic system that does not reflect our modern society.”
Indeed, the Electoral College harkens to the time of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, when only male landowners had the right to vote.
More than two hundred years after their time, with the abolition of slavery and the women’s right to vote had been guaranteed, it is time to re-think the Electoral College system.
We are the only western democracy where the popular vote is not the vote that counts.
Indeed it is time for change.
Khin Khin Gyi, president of the Culver City Democratic Club, may be contacted at president@culvercitydemocraticlub.com