Harvard Professor Sues to Change Presidential Election System
As Democratic leaders such as Hillary Clinton call for elimination of the Electoral College, a Harvard professor who launched a brief, dark-horse Democratic presidential bid last year, is preparing to file a lawsuit challenging the way the nation elects its presidents.
Lawrence Lessig’s suit doesn’t propose getting rid of the Electoral College, which would require a constitutional amendment, but he contends the winner-take-all system used by 48 states in awarding electors unfairly focuses the presidential races on a handful of battlegrounds.
The professor – who tried to persuade 20 Trump electors to break rank and vote for Clinton a week before the Electoral College vote last December – wants to implement a system in which electors cast ballots based on a proportion of the popular vote a candidate receives.
“With a winner-take-all, most of America is ignored,” Lessig said, according to FoxNews.com, contending the system violates the 14th Amendment’s one-man-one-vote principle.
Currently, all but two states award all electors to the winner of the state’s popular vote. Lessig said 24 people have volunteered to be plaintiffs in his lawsuit. The Constitution doesn’t dictate how electors are awarded, and Maine and Nebraska award electors according to the vote in each congressional district. (Read more from “Harvard Professor Sues to Change Presidential Election System” HERE)
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