Rep. Jamie Raskin and Trent England Debate "Electoral College v. Popular Vote"

Trent England and Rep. Jamie Raskin debate the merits of the electoral college versus the popular vote in U.S. presidential elections at a panel discussion at Georgetown Law on January 24. The discussion was moderated by Georgetown Law Distinguished Visitor from Practice Paul Smith, who argued the Wisconsin gerrymandering case of Gill v. Whitford in the Supreme Court in October.

[@Vlasko60]

If every vote doesn't count, and count the same, it is a bad system.

[@Chris.Davies]

Each vote in Iowa counts as 3.8 votes in California. And 38% of the popular vote can win the Whitehouse.

[@maamold]

The smile Raskin has on his face when Trent starts blabbering talking points, while not making a solid case, is beautiful.

[@troytroy5933]

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS VIDEO TO THOSE LEARNING ENGLISH

[@TheCarrShow]

Way to insert your politics into the debate, unbiased moderator.

[@georgeflitzer7160]

You cant love your country only if you win!

[@nicholastrudeau7581]

The issues that people have with the Electoral College and why 2000 amd 2016 happened, can be addressed directly. Are we tired of swing States having all the same and winner-take-all? Then get all of the states to agree to an interstate compact that would have them distribute the Electoral College votes in proportion to the popular vote within their state. Are we tired of having broad disparities between ratios of population to Electoral College vote between the small and big states and maybe even the disparity between voter turn out and the number of electoral votes that state possesses? Then we get Congress to agree to an amendment that would assign Electoral College votes to States based on voter turnout that is equal across all 50 states.

[@hansvon2415]

England's point of India having electoral votes- Indian President is just a figurehead. The executive power rests with the prime minister.

[@MrApplewine]

I have to ask if the president should be elected by popular vote, then why not the federal and state legislatures as well? I'm undecided on the popular vote. That would be proportional representation.

[@slowandeasy8581]

you are confused.

[@MrApplewine]

@@slowandeasy8581We could elect the congress by popular vote too. We don't. Only people from a specific state can elect certain members of congress. But, we all vote for president, even though it isn't a popular vote.

[@richardterroni9433]

You are correct, of the hundreds of thousands of elected individuals only one is not elected by a direct popular vote.

[@mkhedart0mt0avari]

US Representatives and state legislators are meant to represent the constituents in their district. The President is the only elected official in America who represents all Americans, and they ought to be elected by a majority of those Americans.

[@MrApplewine]

@@mkhedart0mt0avariMy point is that congress presides over everybody just like the president, yet the congress is not elected by everybody. However, the congress does have their campaigns open to everybody for private funding. It is a very manipulative process. Popular vote seems to make things worse. I you want to improve elections make them publicly funded and run and take it away from NGO and private parties running the primaries and make the process fully transparent, take out the money. But, the real problem is the system. We are using the old British system, not the Hamiltonian system, so we have just recreated the British Empire in America, making the whole thing moot. We also need to protect labor rights and fund housing and development.

[@felipepineda1585]

I dont think its a republican vs democrat thing. Its more of a "do you mind losing fairly versus do you mind winning unfairly. Thats why the powers that be are terrified to see it go away, mostly republicans. They simply know they will get trounced with that system, or radical idea - 50 states. 1 elec vote per state. 26 wins? If its a split 25-25 go on pop vote

[@indianoutlaw5702]

Raskin will only support this until a Republican gets the plurality, then watch the backtracking.

[@jebthegodemperor7301]

Raskin's point about us being the only presidential system with an electoral college neglects to mention the other presidential countries which use a popular vote. Go on, take a gander. Not very many desirable locales there!

[@Cton88]

28:00, wow, way to plug your politics Raskin

[@rb032682]

Why are you allowing Mr. England to blatantly bullshit people in this debate? This seems to be below the standards of a fine institution such as Georgetown Law.

[@jebthegodemperor7301]

The way I think about the electoral college as it currently stands is that its easy for a demagogue to win one big majority. It takes a special kind of candidate to win, say, 30 simultaneous smaller majorities over a variety of regions with a variety of peoples.

[@ace1da]

Explain Trump

[@jebthegodemperor7301]

@@ace1da literally exactly what I just said

[@ace1da]

@@jebthegodemperor7301 - I see, I misread you. The Electoral college has drifted so far away from its original intent and usefulness. The crazy thing about it though, Federalist 68 suggests the EC was designed to prevent someone like Trump.

[@jebthegodemperor7301]

@@ace1da I agree, but I would argue that the college was prevented to prevent someone like Obama, Hillary or Biden from becoming President.

[@ace1da]

@@jebthegodemperor7301 - was invented you mean? Please explain.

[@captaincoalpile1755]

The Democrats took the Rust Belt for granted for several election cycles. Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Pennsylvania were not swing states in 2016, they were blue states. Regionalism is important in the presidential election

[@jasonh5547]

The electoral college was a stroke of genius by our founders.

[@felipepineda1585]

No it wasn't? Because if a popular vote gets ignored in the name of the electoral college, then this country is not run by "we the people" its run by the minority of the population. So.. what? Just ignore the majority? That's idiocy!

[@mkhedart0mt0avari]

@@jasonh5547And yet the founder most responsible for it, James Madison, the primary architect of the Constitution, later repudiated it. Towards the end of his life, in 1833, he wrote that the Electoral College had been a disaster for representative democracy and for republicanism in the US, and that it needed to be abolished. Even he decided it was a mistake and not a stroke of genius.

[@jasonzcomedy]

Raskin 2024

[@mak7eye]

You are the loud minority 😂

[@rbinsurance4654]

Democracy = Two people beat the crap out of a 3rd person and takes his money. That is life without the electoral college.

[@sarahendrix3132]

Amen

[@ChaoticImpala]

It's too bad we don't have a constitution to protect the rights of the minority, wait a minute.

[@houseruellls6415]

Michael Class you realize majority rule could eviscerate the constitution... right?

[@ChaoticImpala]

@@houseruellls6415 no because only Congress/supreme court/president would be able to amend the constitution

[@houseruellls6415]

Michael Class yes... meaning it’s possible

[@suarezguy]

The a lot of the states get ignored point against the Electoral College ignores that *any* system would involve some areas getting a lot more or less attention than others, any alternative would involve other biases. That which states are swing states can and has changed over time makes it seem better than a lot of those other possible alternative focuses and biases.

[@MrBrian465]

That dude on the left hitting the table and saying "um" every 10 seconds made it incredibly hard to listen to

[@lullabi3234]

he's still right though.

[@fringedeplorable8528]

State representatives ARE elected by a majority vote of the people, even the electors. There are 51 elections that select electors (representatives) that vote on behalf of each State as a whole. Each state has a vote that is weighted based on population size. Currently when the majority of the voters in a State select a representative of a particular party, that is and should be that States selection. With NPV the majority voters choice in a State would be overridden and the minority choice ends up being the state's selection. Thats giving away states (the peoples) sovereign vote. This is a states rights issue. Be aware of unintended consequences. In 2000 Colorado would have had to give their electoral votes to Gore even though Colorado voters selected Bush. In 2004 California would have had to give its electoral votes to Bush even though the State selected John Kerry. There are also security and manipulation issues. If you want to hijack the current election process you have to do the deed in specific states in specific districts that may be more easily spotted. If all votes are dumped into one bucket you could cheat anywhere in America and impact the outcome. Both popular vote and NPV have issues that should be addressed before we make changes due to emotion because your candidate lost.

[@slowandeasy8581]

England is a skilled liar. Many are deceived. Oh well. He has no point. Slip and slide. Decide what point you want to support and make up whatever you need to makeup.

[@suarezguy]

Without the electoral college it seems likely that the parties would focus on regions and also become more extreme, the Democrats just the Northeast+West Coast, the Republicans just Southeast+Plains (with much more emphasis on Southeast) and the more moderate, independent areas like the Great Lakes region getting pretty ignored which I think is a lot worse than them getting too much attention.

[@MrApplewine]

5:31 We actually don't elect Senators (or representatives) by popular vote. The senators make law for the US, not the the state that elects them. That is not popular vote. To determine if it is popular vote you have to match the jurisdiction by which that person has authority to the jurisdiction which votes for them first.

[@iyamaxx]

The guy literally got elected by a popular vote

[@rb032682]

@MrApple - WTF are you talking about?

[@Timmoyoga]

Rep. Jamie Raskin uses logic, actual statistics, and common sense--considering what is good for society--while supporting election reform. The other guy uses fuzzwords, policy speak, and reactionary cliché --trapped inside his "-isms"--while supporting what is good for the 1 %.

[@nicholastrudeau7581]

Regardless, the issues that people have with the Electoral College can be addressed directly. Are we tired of swing States having all the same and winner-take-all? Then get all of the states to agree to an interstate compact that would have them distribute the Electoral College votes in proportion to the popular vote within their state. Are we tired of having broad disparities between ratios of population to Electoral College vote between the small and big states and maybe even the disparity between voter turn out and the number of electoral votes that state possesses? Then we get Congress to agree to an amendment that would assign Electoral College votes to States based on voter turnout that is equal across all 50 states.

[@lullabi3234]

Trent's point about the Southern Democrats claiming national majority vote through voter suppression, and having a single REGION dominating the results exists today. By having people crammed into big urban areas, it WON'T take long for those urbanites to trample ALL OVER the rights and needs of the rural population.

[@bwyan22]

There are republicans in cities and urban areas... They'd all get an actual vote now instead of being ignored. I feel like people are being willfully disingenuous about this. Republicans win off the electoral college and that's why they feel the need to defend it. This "what if" scenario of the tyranny of the majority is just a bad faith argument (it made sense on it's founding given the education level of the general population). Your fear should be the tyranny of the minority telling the majority what to do, not a fantasy about the reverse happening (which is what would be called democracy).

[@shitturdpoopchest]

@@bwyan22 "Republicans win off the electoral college..." So, without the electoral college there will always be a Democratic president? Despite the fact that there are, as you said, Republicans in these very highly-populated urban areas? So without the electoral college those republicans will be overruled, always, by the many more democrats in the urban areas?

[@bwyan22]

Noah Tillery No... without the electoral college, presidents win by popular vote regardless of party. Also, your first statement, although wrong, seems to counter your very next sentence.

[@shitturdpoopchest]

@@bwyan22 I'm only following the logic you set out in your original comment, which is sound logic. Without the EC, presidents will be chosen by a small concentration of the country. Please explain if I'm misunderstood what "Republican win off the electoral college" means

[@bwyan22]

Noah Tillery I think the issue is you’re reading “republicans win off the electoral college” as “republicans can only win off the electoral college”

[@tmac6904]

LOOK if we elected presidents by the popular vote then nyc los angeles and chigcago would choose the president and that is not fair. we can not have city population centers which all have hive mentalites choose the president. If you look at the breakdown of the 2016 election by counties you would see that ttrump won a majority of counties in america as well as states. Now if we went by popular votes it would have been decided by a handful of counties and that just is not fair to the farmers in middle america who cant run political rallies due to lack of population and vast distances between each other. Also dont get mad when it just doesnt go in your favor , its a great system when you when of course but dont act like hillary blew him out either becasue that is just not true it was a close popular vote as well.

[@Lionclawbeast]

You are incorrect, there are statistics showing that the top 10 cities in the united states doesnt even add up to 20% of the vote, and that the top 50 cities dont even add up to 30% of the vote. Nice try.

[@xdarkwolf2255]

Another reason I hate this idea is that the electoral college still ignores votes of those people. Illinois is a good example of that. It's usually a democracy state thanks to chicago anyway. My vote litterally matters even less now if I'm not democrat because my vote isn't even accounted for in the grand scheme of the election

[@Poisonshady313]

CA, NY, and IL in 2016 provided Clinton with 12% of the total national popular vote. CA, NY, and IL in 2016 provided Clinton with 19.3% of the total electoral vote. A popular vote would give the rest of the country MORE influence over the outcome of the election. Not less.

[@felipepineda1585]

Biden in the last election had I believe about 82 million votes. There is NO way that those 3 areas, 2 states and 1 city gave him those number ONLY. What an asanine comment!

[@yeboscrebo4451]

The guy on the right is constantly smirking - it’s annoying

[@oceanspat]

Raskin 's look is , is this guy BS or What , talking gibberish

[@milonjano]

Raskin keeps his smug 'elite' smug smile on....

[@captaincoalpile1755]

The weakest pro electoral college arguments I've ever heard in my life. I am pro EC and I am now considering pressuring my MOC to introduce an ammendment to abolish it

[@rb032682]

The E C has poisoned the USA. Eliminate the E C.

[@suarezguy]

He was pretty unfocused here but it makes sense that parties should be encouraged to, while not abandon states, focus not just on appealing even more to and winning even more of the places where they're already ahead, try to appeal to other areas as well.

[@suarezguy]

Part of his point was that the Electoral College was not flawless but that (should be obvious, but still significant and overlooked) any electoral system will have and lead to problems, flaws, biases.

[@DanSme1]

Raskin's body language and expressions are disgusting. He facial smirking, indicative of his elitist arrogance, is irritating.

[@peterhwin]

and what about his points?! lol.

[@jnananinja7436]

And if you had to listen to such nonsense you would make the same faces 🤪