Opinion Lawrence Douglas

Electoral college holds millions of voters hostage to a few counties

These are not easy days for supporters of American democracy. But what twists my innards is not the prospect that in less than two weeks’ time, the majority of voters could hand the reins of power to a vengeful authoritarian demagogue. Instead, I’m sickened by the prospect that the electoral college can do that for us – that Kamala Harris could win the national popular vote, but come up short where it counts. We know the popular vote winner has already twice lost in this young century, in 2000 and again in 2016. But few realise how narrowly we missed a catastrophic result in 2020 when Biden won the national popular vote by a substantial margin – over 7 million votes. In every other democratic nation, such a result would…

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Guardian Weekly (Digital) - 1 Issue, 25 October 2024

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