The Challenge To “Winner-Take-All” Launched

Lawrence Lessig @ IVN.US Feb 23, 2018

Beginning today, in four states across the country, lawsuits will be filed to challenge the way presidential electors are selected in America. 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.

A Republican in California, no less than a Democrat in Texas, voting for the President of the United States should have her vote for President counted equally, regardless of whether she happens to vote with the majority in her state. Yet under the system as it is now, their votes are counted unequally. If they vote with the majority, their vote matters. If they vote with the minority, their vote counts for zero.

That makes no sense in any democracy; it makes no sense in ours, at least against the background of the principles embedded within our Constitution. That point we believe these cases will prove.

 

Lessig @ The Hill: Electoral College confusions

Electoral College Confusions Lessig @ The Hill October 31, 2018 Civil rights activists are challenging the legality of four states’ winner-take-all method of allocating U.S. presidential electoral college votes, claiming the practice magnifies some votes at the...

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