US may never ‘get rid of the Electoral College’: Rob Kall

The US may never see the situation where Americans “get rid of the Electoral College,” a political commentator has said.  

Rob Kall, executive editor at OpedNews.com, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Sunday while commenting on a poll which says a large majority of American people want the US Constitution to be amended so that the Electoral College will be replaced with a popular vote system.

The poll from Gallup found that 61 percent of the people support having a popular vote system, up 6 points from 2019 and up 12 points from 2016.

Eighty-nine percent of Democrats and 68 percent of independents believe the Electoral College system should be replaced, whereas just 23 percent of Republicans support moving to a popular vote system.

Republican President Donald Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton secured the popular vote with a sizable lead of 2.8 million votes, tantamount to 2.1 percent of the total vote.

Nonetheless, Trump comfortably won the election by winning key states, thanks to the so-called Electoral College system.

The system overrides the popular vote, which gives the victory to the candidate winning the most ballots. It instead makes 538 electors across different states that are chosen based on each state’s representation in Congress, liable for electing the chief executive. Therefore, if a contestant secures at least 270 of the electoral votes, they have won the presidential race.

Opponents say the system counters the fundamentals of a democratic republic, calling for its abolition.

“The reason we have this problem is the same reason that we have the US Senate. The Constitution gives states two representatives each no matter how people there were in states. So we have Vermont and Montana population with hundreds of thousands of population getting the two senators and we have California with forty million people having two senators. And this is a similar situation with the Electoral College,” Kall said.

“So in order to make a change happen there has to be a resolution that would change the policy, and that’s not going to happen because senators from those small states that have disproportionate powers are going to block from that from happening,” he added.  

“It is highly unlikely that the US will ever see the situation where they get rid of the Electoral College or they get rid of the Senate, which both should be done. The Senate is an archaic institution that is something that the US is stuck with for eternity, I believe,” he noted.

“And it’s really sad because it mean there’s not democracy and there is not equal representation and it is unjust but that is the way it is, and that’s the way it is going to stay,” the analyst concluded.

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