President Donald Trump responded to Democratic calls to abolish the Electoral College and pack the U.S. Supreme Court on March 20, by telling his 2020 presidential opponents to instead “win it at the Ballot Box!”
Nearly half a dozen Democratic candidates have embraced such radical positions, or have said they are open to them.
Eliminating the Electoral College isn’t a new idea, but opponents of Trump have become much more strident in their efforts to ditch the 230-year-old system since he won the 2016 presidential election. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2.9 million votes, but she lost the all-important Electoral College vote, 304-227.
Supporters of the effort contend that the Electoral College is unfair, and that switching to a national popular vote would bolster direct democracy and make presidential elections more competitive. But Trump, like America’s founders, disagrees.
“With the Popular Vote, you go to just the large States - the Cities would end up running the Country. Smaller States & the entire Midwest would end up losing all power - & we can’t let that happen. I used to like the idea of the Popular Vote, but now realize the Electoral College is far better for the U.S.A.,” he continued.
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), a leading Democratic White House contender, said March 19 that she is “open to discussion” about eliminating the Electoral College.
Beto O’Rourke, a former Texas congressman-turned-Democratic presidential candidate, told students at Penn State University on March 19 that there is “a lot of wisdom” in abandoning the longstanding institution.
“It puts some states out of play altogether, they don’t feel like their votes really count,” he continued. “If we really want everyone to vote, to give them every reason to vote, we have to make sure their votes count and go to the candidate of their choosing. So I think there’s a lot of wisdom in that.”
A day earlier, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said during a CNN town hall at the historically black Jackson State University in Mississippi that abolishing the Electoral College is the only way to make every vote count.
“We need to make sure that every vote counts,” Warren said. “The way we can make that happen is that we can have national voting, and that means get rid of the Electoral College, and everybody ... I think everybody ought to have to come and ask for your vote.”
Harris, O’Rourke, and Warren are among those who have also signaled support for increasing the number of justices at the U.S. Supreme Court to either dilute the current Republican-appointed majority, or achieve an outright Democratic majority.
Warren echoed her call the same day, saying, “It’s not just about expansion, it’s about depoliticizing the Supreme Court.”
Pete Buttigieg, a likely Democratic candidate and 37-year-old progressive mayor of South Bend, Indiana, proposed an identical plan in New Hampshire a week before O’Rourke.
“Obviously, I’d like to see a court that is in line with my values. So would everybody else,” he said. “The question to me is how do we arrest the decline in the perception of the court toward being viewed as a nakedly political institution.”
White House contender Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) has gone even further, saying that Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, is illegitimate because Gorsuch’s seat should have gone to outgoing President Barack Obama’s 2016 nominee, Merrick Garland.
Asked whether he would preemptively pack the Supreme Court in his favor in light of Democratic calls to do the same, Trump told reporters in a Rose Garden news conference on March 19 that the court will stay at nine judges, at least for the next six years.
“No, I wouldn’t entertain that,” Trump said. “We would have no interest in that whatsoever ... It will never happen. It won’t happen, I guarantee you, it won’t happen for six years.”
“The only reason that they’re doing that,” he said about his Democratic opponents, is that “they want to try and catch up. So if they can’t catch up through the ballot box by winning an election, they want to try doing it in a different way.”
Friends Read Free