TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Stacey Shrader Joslin on Dec 2, 2016

U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Memphis, has filed a constitutional amendment to eliminate the Electoral College and provide for direct election of the president and vice president, USA Today reports. “For the second time in recent memory, and for the fifth time in our history, we have a President-elect, who lost the popular vote,” said Cohen, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice. “The Electoral College is an antiquated system that was established to prevent citizens from directly electing our nation’s president, yet that notion is antithetical to our understanding of democracy,” he argues. The amendment would need two-thirds approval in both the House and the Senate and would then have to be ratified by 38 of the 50 states.