Written December 2, 2016 by Lynn McMorris

The method chosen by individual states of awarding electoral votes via a system of winner takes all would seem to violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Everyone’s vote should be equally counted. I would love to see these issues litigated.

Voters lose their voice in the federal election when a state forces its electors to award all electoral votes to the candidate backed by the majority. Maine and Nebraska have recognized the problem and rightfully addressed it by requiring their electoral votes to be split and awarded in direct ratio to the vote of the state’s citizens.

In a winner take all system, the state vote could be split by 2 or 2 million and it doesn’t matter. All the electoral votes are awarded to one candidate, unless the electors break rank and do whatever the hell they want, as in many cases they legally can. The individual state’s plan for allocating electoral college votes was not mandated by the constitution but has been left entirely to each state. Constitutional protections always trump — god I can hardly type that word now — state law.

The other piece of that argument is this. A citizen’s vote may be diluted merely based on their location. In an increasingly mobile world, you move from a rural state such as Wyoming to a more populated area and your vote is suddenly worth less because of the uneven distribution of electoral college votes held by each state.

I do not believe our forefathers ever envisioned the system morphing into one in which a candidate can win the popular vote by 2.6 million votes yet lose the election. Twice in the last 16 years our citizens have chosen one candidate via popular vote only to have our flawed electoral system anoint the loser as president. We’ve outgrown the system as it exists today.

Fix it or ditch it.

For further reading, Charlotte England’s reporting in The Independent examines similar arguments from a legal perspective. You can read it here.