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11 ConLawNOW 1 (2019-2020)

handle is hein.journals/akjopal11 and id is 1 raw text is: 










     THE CONTINUING VALIDITY OF THE ELECTORAL
       COLLEGE: A QUANTITATIVE CONFIRMATION


                            Audrey J. Lynn*

     Not my president! That cry resounded across the nation in the
wake of the 2016 election of Donald Trump, the second Republican
candidate in the past two decades to ascend to the presidency despite
receiving a minority of individual votes cast.1 Disappointed voters and
disempowered politicians clamor against the two-century-old system as
an anti-democratic relic of institutionalized slavery. Too impatient to
endure through the arduous process of amending the Constitution, several
states and the District of Columbia have voted to join the National Popular
Vote Interstate Compact. If the Compact goes into effect, they will give
their own electoral votes to the candidate who wins a majority of the
nationwide popular vote.2 Not satisfied with leading by example, the
drafters of the Compact purposefully crafted it so that it will take effect
only if enough states join that the member states control 270 votes, the
number a presidential candidate must obtain to win. Thus, the members
could dictate that the winner of the nationwide popular vote would
become president, even though the remaining states have not agreed to be
governed in this manner, and the people of the member states have not
agreed to forfeit their states' voice should they see things differently than
the majority.


* Audrey J. Lynn is the Head of Electronic Resources and Digital Initiatives at Regent University
Law Library and an adjunct professor at Regent University School of Law. She received her J.D. cum
laude from Regent and her B.S. in Mathematics summa cum laude from Georgia Gwinnett College.
The author extends special thanks to Corrie Evans for her editorial assistance with this article. Mrs.
Evans is a J.D. candidate at Regent University School of Law and a staff editor for Regent University
Law Review. She will serve on the Law Review editorial board as Symposium Editor beginning in
August 2019.
    1. See infra notes 58, 60 and accompanying text.
    2. [T]he National Popular Vote compact would require that each member state award its
electoral votes to the presidential candidate who received the largest number of popular votes in all
50 states and the District of Columbia. JoHN R. KozA ET AL., EVERY VoTE EQUAL 258 (2013),
http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/sites/default/files/eve-4th-ed-ch6-web-vl.pdf
[https://perma.cc/473Z-V7UC].

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