Boxer Decries Electoral College: ‘A System Where the Winner Can Lose’

Wednesday on the Senate floor, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) discussed her legislation to amend the Constitution and abolish the Electoral College because she explained, it is a “system where the winner can lose.”

Boxer said, “I rise today to discuss legislation I introduced to eliminate the Electoral College and ensure that the candidate who wins the most votes will be elected president. Now, clearly this has nothing to do with this past election. There are recounts going on. We’ll see where that goes. but the bottom line is, this looks to the future. And I want to say something. The presidency is the only office in America where the candidate who wins the most votes can still lose the election. There isn’t any elected office in the nation, be it county level, city level, state level, national level, where this is true. A person gets more votes, one person one vote, majority wins. Not true in the presidential election.”

She added, “You know, a lot of people came up to me after this election and said, you know, I don’t feel my voice is heard, period, and this is one of the reasons. Well, make your voice heard on either getting rid of the Electoral College or the state compact where a state would give its votes to the winner of the national popular vote. Voting’s the cornerstone of democracy. We’ve had many women through the decades die for that right to vote. Generations of Americans of every gender, race, religion and ideology have marched and struggled and died to secure this fundamental freedom, and yet we have a system where the winner can lose, where the winner can lose. We owe it to the American people, who have given so much for the right to vote, to make sure that every vote matters and every vote counts. We owe it to them to ensure that the vote of the citizen in my state is worth the same as a vote of someone in a swing state. We owe it to every Republican voter and every Democratic voter and every Independent voter, every Green Party voter. Whatever the party, to have that vote count. To have that vote count. One person, one vote. That’s the cornerstone of democracy.”

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