Democracy Reformer Larry Lessig Files Lawsuits in Four States to Fix Our Electoral College System
AlterNet Feb 22, 2018
Harvard law scholar and democracy reformer Larry Lessig has launched his latest David-vs.-Goliath fight to change one of the most unfair, unequal and seemingly invincible pillars of presidential elections: the Electoral College’s winner-take-all system of awarding votes in 48 states.
“Beginning today, in four states across the country, lawsuits will be filed to challenge the way presidential electors are selected in America,” he wrote on Medium.com. “The plaintiffs in these suits charge that the ‘winner-take-all’ system—the system by which the candidate who wins the popular vote in a state gets all of the electoral college votes in that state—violates both the 14th Amendment’s principle of ‘one person, one vote,’ and the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.”
Lessig and a legal team lead by David Boies, who represented Democrat Al Gore before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000 (when the Court stopped the Florida recount, making Republican George W. Bush president), filed suits in four states to challenge their winner-take-all Electoral College votes. (In Maine and Nebraska, presidential electors are chosen in districts. To elect the president, 270 Electoral College votes are needed.)
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