The Mueller report states that the FBI “believes that Russian hackers were able to breach ‘at least one’ Florida county government through a spearphishing campaign targeting local election officials,” Politico reports.
“Last August, then-Florida Sen. Bill Nelson faced criticism for saying cryptically that the Russians had accessed his state’s voter data.”
Mayor Pete Buttigieg made his call to scrap the Electoral College part of his 2020 campaign launch, The Hill reports.
Said Buttigieg: “We can’t say it’s much of a democracy when twice in my lifetime the Electoral College has overruled the American people.”
He added: “Why should our vote in Indiana only count once or twice in a century? Or your vote in Wyoming or New York?”
Related: The Electoral College penalizes voters in high turnout states.
“Tennessee lawmakers are considering a bill that would impose new restrictions on groups conducting voter registrations and subject them to potential criminal charges and civil penalties,” the HuffPost reports.
“Activists say the move is unnecessary and would deter voter registration in a state that already has one of the lowest rates in the country.”
“The Oregon Senate voted to join a movement designed to award the presidency to the winner of the popular vote,” the Oregonian reports.
“If the bill is approved by the Oregon House and signed into law, Oregon would join 14 other states and the District of Columbia in the National Popular Vote compact. The idea behind the compact is that state legislatures would award their state’s Electoral College votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes nationwide.”
“Barely a week after launching an effort to award Ohio’s electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes nationally, supporters abandoned the quest for this year,” the Columbus Dispatch reports.
Before the withdrawal, Gov. Mike DeWine (R) told reporters, “Well, I’m against that, I think that’s a stupid idea, frankly. Why would Ohio voters give up their right to make decisions about who the next president of the United States is?”
“The majority of 2020 Democratic hopefuls are sponsoring or considering plans to dismantle the electoral college. Their pledges follow a growing movement for change at the state level and represent frustration over twice losing to Republican candidates in the past 20 years — Donald Trump in 2016 and George W. Bush in 2000 — despite winning the popular vote,” Axios reports.
“Eight Democratic 2020 candidates support eliminating the electoral college in favor of the popular vote… Four Democrats are open to the idea, and only 3 want to keep it.”
John Koza: “Ohio news organizations have been trying to identify the mysterious backers of an initiative petition proposing an amendment to the Ohio Constitution requiring the Ohio legislature to guarantee the presidency to the candidate receiving the most popular votes nationwide.”
“What is definitely clear is who isn’t behind it – namely the National Popular Vote organization which wrote the National Popular Vote interstate compact in 2006 and has won enactment of the compact by 14 states possessing 184 electoral votes (just 86 short of the 270 needed to put the legislation into effect).”
“Not only is the National Popular Vote organization not behind this mystery petition, there are three reasons why it is clear that this petition is not a bona fide effort to enact the compact, but, instead, an effort to use the compact’s widespread public support to facilitate passage in the legislature of something entirely different.”
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) “signed a bill that would require the state’s electoral college votes to go to the candidate who wins the popular vote,” KRQE reports.
“New Mexico joins a compact of 13 Democrat-leaning states who have passed a similar bill since the 2016 election.”
“President Trump — who has previously issued baseless claims about ballot-counting and voter fraud — warned House Republicans on Tuesday night to be ‘more paranoid’ about vote tallies,” CNN reports.
Said Trump: “I don’t like the way the votes are being tallied. I don’t like it, and you don’t like it either. You just don’t want to say it because you’re afraid of the press. You’re afraid of the press.”
“Calls to eliminate the Electoral College are gaining traction within the Senate Democratic Conference, but the push is revealing a divide between White House hopefuls and senators from rural states,” The Hill reports.
“A group of Democratic senators introduced a constitutional amendment on Tuesday that would replace the Electoral College with a system that would directly elect the president through the popular vote, marking the second proposal to come out of the chamber in a matter of days.”
“Ohioans could vote this fall on a measure to award the presidency to the candidate who wins the national popular vote — regardless of which candidate wins the Buckeye State,” the Columbus Dispatch reports.
“The proposed constitutional amendment would bypass the electoral college by authorizing Ohio’s membership in the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.”
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) “is set on Tuesday to unveil a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College and allow for the election of presidents by popular vote,” the Daily Beast reports.
“The amendment is supported by other Democrats in the chamber, an aide said, including Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and senior members of the Senate Judiciary Committee: Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).”
Related: The winner-take-all Electoral College isn’t in the U.S. Constitution.
Gov. John Carney (D) has signed legislation adding Delaware to a group of states pledging to give their Electoral College presidential votes to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of the voters’ will in those states, NBC Philadelphia reports.
Carney’s approval makes Delaware the 13th Democratic-leaning state to join the popular-vote compact, which now has 184 of the 270 electoral college votes needed to elect the president.
The agreement goes into effect once states representing at least 270 electoral votes have joined.
Michael Towle: “Official counting continues past election night. State and federal laws allow extensions of voting deadlines for military personnel and citizens living abroad. Absentee ballots and provisional ballots (required by law when there is a question about the voter’s status) often don’t show up in the first sets of reported numbers. Oregon, Washington and Colorado have a vote-by-mail system, which can slow the processing of ballots. Maine uses a ranked-choice system for its federal elections that requires a second round of counting if no candidate has a majority after the first round.”
“We can’t stop the networks from reporting the results that they have, but we can require that votes not be released to the networks until there is a reasonable certainty of the outcome.”
“Unfortunately, premature announcements result in questions about the validity of elections. If early reports differ from the more complete final counts, the urge to cry foul is strong.”
“Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is poised to sign a bill to overhaul the state’s voting system with machines that are widely considered vulnerable to hacking,” Politico reports.
“The new equipment would replace the state’s paperless, electronic machines — technology so risky that a federal judge said last year that its continued use threatened Georgians’ ‘constitutional interests.’ But security researchers say similar risks exist in the new electronic machines that the GOP-led legislature has chosen, which would embed the voter’s choice in a barcode on a slip of paper.”
A new Politico/Morning Consult poll finds that 50% of voters say the national popular vote should be used for presidential elections, while 34% who think presidential elections should be based on the Electoral College and 16% have no opinion.
Ross Douthat: “Is there a case for a system that sometimes produces undemocratic outcomes? I think so, on two grounds. First, it creates incentives for political parties and candidates to seek supermajorities rather than just playing for 50.1 percent, because the latter play is a losing one more often than in a popular-vote presidential system.”
“Second, it creates incentives for political parties to try to break regional blocs controlled by the opposition, rather than just maximizing turnout in their own areas, because you win the presidency consistently only as a party of multiple regions and you can crack a rival party’s narrow majority by flipping a few states.”
“According to this — admittedly contrarian — theory, the fact that the Electoral College produces chaotic or undemocratic outcomes in moments of ideological or regional polarization is actually a helpful thing, insofar as it drives politicians and political hacks (by nature not the most creative types) to think bigger than regional blocs and 51 percent majorities.”
Henry Olsen: “The rise of this democratic sentiment has, over time, created the sense that democratic legitimacy flows from the expressed judgment of the people. This sentiment gave rise to the 17th Amendment, which instituted direct election of the Senate. So long as the electoral college merely amplified the popular vote’s determination, the college was not seen as illegitimate.”
“The current political circumstances, however, have changed that dramatically. President Trump won in 2016 because his political coalition was efficiently distributed among states with a majority in the college. Moreover, the durability of that coalition despite withering criticism creates the strong possibility that he could be reelected in 2020 while losing the popular vote by an even greater margin. His successor in 2024 could win while losing the popular vote by still greater margins.”
“That simply cannot stand over time. The majority of Americans will not consent to being ruled by a minority, nor should they. Whatever the republican theory of the founding generation, public opinion now conflates republican government with liberal democracy, and democracy cannot long endure the rule of the majority by a minority.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
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