Dem introducing bill to abolish Electoral College
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) will introduce legislation on Tuesday to get rid of the Electoral College, after Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election despite leading in the popular vote.
“In my lifetime, I have seen two elections where the winner of the general election did not win the popular vote,” Boxer said in a statement. “In 2012, Donald Trump tweeted, ‘The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.’ I couldn’t agree more. One person, one vote!”
{mosads}She added that Clinton, whom she supported, is “on track to have received more votes than any other presidential candidate in history except Barack Obama.”
“The Electoral College is an outdated, undemocratic system that does not reflect our modern society, and it needs to change immediately,” she said.
Clinton is currently leading Trump by nearly a million votes, according to a Cook Political Report tracker of the national popular vote, but Trump won the Electoral College, leading the former secretary of State 290-232.
According to Pew, Clinton would be the fifth person to win the popular vote but lose the election, with the most recent being Al Gore in 2000.
Boxer’s legislation would amend the Constitution to abolish the Electoral College. Even if it is approved by Congress it would need to be approved by three-fourths of the states within seven years before it would take effect.
Trump called the Electoral College “genius” on Tuesday morning, despite past criticism.
The Electoral College is actually genius in that it brings all states, including the smaller ones, into play. Campaigning is much different!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 15, 2016
The tweet comes after Trump said during a “60 Minutes” interview on Sunday that he still has issues with the Electoral College.
“I’m not going to change my mind just because I won,” the president-elect said. “But I would rather see it where you went with simple votes. You know, you get 100 million votes and somebody else gets 90 million votes and you win.”
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