Last I read, it's 270 Electoral votes to win. The Electoral College (EC) in it's present form is broken in 48 out of 50 states, in my opinion. In those states, it's winner take all. That's how people like Bush & Trump have won the White House without winning the popular vote. NPR Crunched the numbers prior to the 2016 election using 2012 voting figures. Based on the 2012 turn-out, if you target the right states (the smaller ones), and win each one with 50% plus one vote, you could win the presidency with 23% of the total vote.
That's why there are those screaming to throw-out the EC. But that isn't going to happen anytime soon. What could be done to "fix" this issue is for those 48 states to adopt the Maine/Nebraska method. Currently, each state is assigned one EC for each rep they have in Congress plus one for each of its two senators. In ME & NE, you have to win the vote a congressional district to win one EC. Currently, the overall winner in the state receives the other two EC votes. Not perfect, but better then winner take all. If FL followed this in 2000, would we have dealt with weeks of swinging chads and the US Supreme Court basically siding with Bush?
Personally, I want to see it taken a step further: truly split up a state's EC votes based on the percentage of the popular vote. So, a state like Montana with 3 ECs: if Candidate A wins 65% and Candidate B wins 35%, A gets 2EC and B gets 1EC.
But that will never happen as long as there are Rs around as the current winner-takes-all system favors them.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2020-11-04 10:58 am (UTC)The Electoral College (EC) in it's present form is broken in 48 out of 50 states, in my opinion. In those states, it's winner take all. That's how people like Bush & Trump have won the White House without winning the popular vote. NPR Crunched the numbers prior to the 2016 election using 2012 voting figures. Based on the 2012 turn-out, if you target the right states (the smaller ones), and win each one with 50% plus one vote, you could win the presidency with 23% of the total vote.
That's why there are those screaming to throw-out the EC. But that isn't going to happen anytime soon. What could be done to "fix" this issue is for those 48 states to adopt the Maine/Nebraska method. Currently, each state is assigned one EC for each rep they have in Congress plus one for each of its two senators. In ME & NE, you have to win the vote a congressional district to win one EC. Currently, the overall winner in the state receives the other two EC votes. Not perfect, but better then winner take all. If FL followed this in 2000, would we have dealt with weeks of swinging chads and the US Supreme Court basically siding with Bush?
Personally, I want to see it taken a step further: truly split up a state's EC votes based on the percentage of the popular vote. So, a state like Montana with 3 ECs: if Candidate A wins 65% and Candidate B wins 35%, A gets 2EC and B gets 1EC.
But that will never happen as long as there are Rs around as the current winner-takes-all system favors them.