By Mark Rhoads-
Sen. Elizabeth Warren wants to abolish the Electoral College. This is a thoughtless idea for many reasons that would not even achieve what she hopes it would. Democrats love to say that Hillary Clinton won the 2016 national popular vote over Donald Trump by 2.9 million votes and that is true if you count only those two candidates.
Their fantasy is that west-coast voters were disenfranchised by heavy Electoral vote states in the East. But if you combine the Trump votes with those of Libertarian Gary Johnson and conservative Evan McMullin and compare them to the left-leaning voters who backed Clinton and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, the anti-Left popular vote led by a margin of 1.26 million votes more than the pro-Left national vote.
Suppose there had been no Electoral College for the 2000 election when the decision hung on the Electoral votes of Florida and a thin margin between George W. Bush and Al Gore in that state. Instead of legal challenges in the counties of just one state, there could have been hundreds of challenges in counties all over the country and the raw head count might never have finished.
Under our system, Presidential nominees share the state and county ballots with other candidates including governor and other statewide officials, U.S. Senator, members of Congress, state legislators, and county and city officials that also need finality in their counts. Until some system can guarantee an absolutely perfect national count of more than 140 million voters, getting rid of the Electoral College is a terrible idea.
