Question of the Week

We want to hear from you

Do you think the electoral college should be abolished?

U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) filed legislation this week seeking to abolish the electoral college, the Los Angeles Times reported.

“In my lifetime, I have seen two elections where the winner of the general election did not win the popular vote,” Boxer said in a statement. “The Electoral College is an outdated, undemocratic system that does not reflect our modern society, and it needs to change immediately. Every American should be guaranteed that their vote counts.”

Both Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Al Gore in 2000 won the popular vote but lost the electoral college, and therefore the election.

President-elect Donald Trump tweeted in 2012 that the electoral college was a "disaster for democracy." When asked about those sentiments in his Sunday interview with 60 Minutes, Trump said: “I'm not going to change my mind just because I won. But I would rather see it where you went with simple votes.” However in a Nov. 15 tweet, he called the electoral college ”genius.”

When we asked readers in 2011 what they’d change about the Constitution if they could, many responses targeted the electoral college.

So this week, we’d like to ask you: Should the electoral college be abolished? Why or why not?

Answer in the comments.

Read the answers to last week’s question: Should we stop turning the clocks back?

Featured answer:

Posted by NYC Lawyer: “The idea is to make it (daylight) more broadly ‘usable.’ The idea is that fewer people benefit from the sun coming up at 4 a.m. in the summer than would benefit from ‘moving’ that hour of daylight to the evening. You don’t change the amount, obviously. It’s certainly a debatable point, but it’s not entirely devoid of logic.”