Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) has a “pro-democracy” plan for overturning the American republic: ban the electoral college.
This week, Schiff called for an undertaking of the decades-old institutions within the United States, including doing away with the Electoral College, expanding the seats of the Supreme Court, and banning the filibuster.
According to documents obtained by Politico, the Democrat pitched his policy package as a “defender of democracy.”
“I think our democracy is at more grave risk now than ever,” Schiff said in a recent interview. “And it’s clear that that issue is going to be front and center — and needs to be front and center — on the national stage.”
He claimed that abolishing the Electoral College is an “overdue” constitutional change, cautioning that the Republican Party would most likely hijack the process.
Telling late-night host Bill Maher, Schiff explained that he would prefer to use "discrete amendments" to the Constitution that would overturn such controversial money-in-politics Supreme Court rulings such as Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
“I think we're better off focusing on discrete amendments to the Constitution to overturn Citizens United and make sure that we can have elections untampered or uninfluenced by excessive expenditures and dark money. And I would favor doing away with the Electoral College system," Schiff said.
According to a 2019 study from researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, Republican presidential candidates are expected to win 65 percent of future elections due to the Electoral College system being set up to favor their party's voting base.
The study examined the recent trend of when the popular vote candidate winner still loses the U.S. presidential election, which has happened twice since 2000. Both times, the losers were Democratic candidates. Al Gore in 2000 and Hillary Clinton in 2016. The study found that completely abolishing the Electoral College and its 270 votes would be the better solution for the Democrat Party. Policy changes would chip away at its power check on the popular vote.
Schiff suggested that the better solution would be rewriting and completely overhauling the Constitution.
“This is the problem; I don't have any confidence, frankly, that we could improve on the word product of the framers with the crowd we have today. So I like it in theory," Schiff said.
