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One of the most outrageous lies Donald Trump told in the last days of his presidency was that Congress could stop election fraud by throwing out all the legally cast votes for President Joe Biden in five states, including Wisconsin, and allowing corruptly gerrymandered Republican legislatures in those states to declare Trump the winner.
Two-thirds of House Republicans and eight Republican senators betrayed their country and supported Trump’s destruction of democracy. They voted against certifying electoral votes in two states, Pennsylvania and Arizona. So much for Republicans pretending to protect the Electoral College from Democrats who have always been eager to abolish it for very good reason.
Because of the Electoral College, the presidential election is the only election in America where the candidate who gets the most votes can be declared the loser. That’s exactly what elected the last two Republican presidents. Al Gore got 543,000 more votes than George W. Bush, and Hillary Clinton got nearly three million more votes than Trump. Fortunately for all of us, Biden defeated Trump by more than seven million votes and won 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232. But that was closer than you might think. If only 65,000 votes out of 155 million votes cast had gone to Trump instead of Biden in Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona and Nebraska’s Second Congressional district, the Electoral College would have declared Trump the winner with 270 electoral votes to Biden’s 268. That’s how unreliable the Electoral College is.
Reforming the Process
How could the leaders of a nation that until Trump considered itself the world’s greatest democracy perpetuate such an unfair process that can so drastically distort the intentions of American voters? I just told you. Republicans have no interest in reforming an egregiously unfair process that elected the last two Republican presidents. It’s also intentionally difficult to amend the Constitution as it always should be. Amendments require a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate and approval of three-fourths of the state legislatures.
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That’s why states are pursuing a grassroots alternative called the National Popular Vote Compact. It’s a simple agreement among states to award all their electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the national popular vote. So far, 15 states (not including Wisconsin yet) and the District of Columbia (which has three electoral votes even though it’s not represented in Congress) have joined the effort. Those states actually control 196 electoral votes out of the 270 needed to elect a president. If it can reach that threshold, the presidential candidate who gets the most votes nationally would win the presidency. What a concept.
The Electoral College can’t assure that because electoral votes are determined by the number of Senators and members of Congress in each state. The Senate isn’t really a democratic institution because every state has only two senators regardless of population, whether it’s California with 39 million voters or Wyoming with 578,000. The Electoral College wildly overrepresents sparsely populated rural areas and small towns and underrepresents large metropolitan areas with racially diverse populations. Sounds familiar in American politics, doesn’t it?
Gerrymandering
A similar grassroots movement has begun nationally to correct another serious election problem. That’s to prevent a repeat of the corrupt political gerrymandering that occurred after 2010 when the racist, anti-Obama Tea Party election gave Republicans the power in many states to redraw voting districts. Wisconsin is still among the worst gerrymandered states in the nation with lines dishonestly drawn to assure Democrats win the fewest possible legislative and congressional seats. In 2018, Democrats swept every statewide office and won more legislative votes than Republicans, but Republicans still retained control of the legislature with an almost two-thirds majority in the Assembly.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote a terrible Supreme Court decision in 2019 forbidding federal courts from interfering with corrupt gerrymandering to protect voting rights. That’s why 21 states have now created independent or bipartisan redistricting commissions to prevent elected politicians from using the power to keep themselves in office. In Wisconsin, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers will be able to veto unfair redistricting by the legislature. In November, Republicans tried to win a veto-proof legislative majority, but they failed. If redistricting ends in a standoff between Evers and legislators, courts can still redraw the map.
After four of the longest years in our lives watching the daily destruction of American democracy by Trump and his Republican enablers, like the country song says, “thank God and Greyhound he’s gone.” We are left with one of the deadliest public health crises and the worst economic devastation our nation has ever experienced simultaneously.
We know everything can’t all be fixed at once. But it already seems refreshing to have a perfectly sane president saying and doing rational things to begin restoring our American democracy. Who knows? Maybe we won’t even have to think about him every day.
