The Opinions - A Fix for Trump’s Stop the Steal Strategy

Episode Date: September 26, 2024

Jesse Wegman, a member of the Times editorial board, has argued that to make the American election process more straightforward and just, the United States should elect its president based on the outcome of the popular vote rather than the Electoral College. But in this episode of “The Opinions” he goes a step further, arguing that the Electoral College renders elections more vulnerable to legal manipulation for political ends. Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. I'm Jesse Wegman. I'm a member of the Times editorial board. I write about law and politics and electoral reform. And I wrote a book on the Electoral College called Let the People Pick the President, which I think speaks for itself. The Trump campaign is based on the premise that there is no way Donald Trump can lose. except by fraud. They want to cheat.

But until then, Republicans must win. We have to win this election. Most important election ever. We want a landslide that's too big to rig. That's obviously not compatible with a representative democracy's survival, but that has been the way he has operated since the beginning of his time running for president.

So the entire model of the Trump campaign and the Trump movement is that the game is rigged unless they win. And we're seeing it play out right now in Trump's speeches, in his stump speech, and in the Republican lawyer's efforts to throw out tens of thousands of eligible voters all over the country, but especially in the swing states where the election will be decided. Over 200 people showed up here to become certified poll watchers, one of 17 similar events that the Trump campaign held in.

states across the country. This is an effort to recruit volunteers to monitor the polls from every battleground state. We're going to use a lot of money to train all of our poll watchers, poll workers, our legal experts around the country, because we need to ensure election integrity. But it's really important to remember that the only reason the stop the steel movement exists at all is because of the electoral college. You know, when votes are as close as they are in certain states, it's much easier for bad actors to go in and monkey with the results and so doubt and confusion and cynicism. So we saw that in 2020 and 2016, where, you know, just a few thousand votes decided the election in both cases, even though the national popular vote margin was on the order of

millions. You know, we're all rightly concerned about whether the courts are going to hold up the way they did in 2020. The Trump campaign. and its allies, I think brought around 60 cases in 2020 challenging the vote in various states, and they lost all of those cases. And that was a good thing, right? And I think we're rightly vigilant about how the courts will handle similar challenges this year. But I would argue that that's really the wrong thing to focus on, because the whole reason that we're having these disputes is that we use this bizarre, outdated, archaic system called the Electoral College for choosing our president. And under the Electoral College, all that matters is a few votes in a few swing states that are

completely arbitrary. They don't represent America any better than the rest of the country. It's just that they happen to be evenly divided. And those states get all the attention from the campaigns. They get all the attention from the ad dollars. They get all the attention now from the courts because how exactly those states run their votes and how the votes are counted matters hugely when elections in those states are so close. Among all the other ways in which the Electoral College is corrosive and distortive and bad for democracy is this one, is that it leads us into a sort of litigation mindset where every vote gets fought over in the courts rather than, as it should be, where people vote and there's a result. And it's clear.

and both sides accept it, and we move on to fight another day. So the fundamental way in which the Electoral College distorts our election of the president is that the states use this winner-take-all rule for awarding their electors. This is entirely an option of the states. So we're watching it play out right now in Nebraska, where lawmakers are arguing over whether or not to switch their method of allocating electors. Nebraska has the chance to give one of its five electors to the Democratic nominee. Nebraska obviously is a very conservative state, but Omaha in the second district is its biggest city, and Omaha can swing in favor of the Democrat.

And it has done that twice. It did it in 2008 and 2020. If Nebraska were to switch back to the way almost every other state awards its electors winner take all, the Democratic candidate would never get that electoral vote. So Nebraska has ended up not changing its means of awarding electors, but it has highlighted the fact that states can change their method whenever they want as long as they do it before election day. So let's take Georgia where obviously in 2020 it was an extremely close vote there. Donald Trump personally tried to insert himself into the process to flip the vote. I still don't understand why he gets to run to be president again after doing that. But here we are. It's 2024.

for, and he and his allies are trying to, in advance, introduce procedures that will create chaos and delay and potentially even miscounts. The most recent example is the Georgia Board of Elections has set a rule that ballots have to be hand-counted, which is absurd. You know, I think in the end, those actions are probably illegal and they will, you know, be struck down. But the fact that it's Even being debated here a few weeks before the election is very likely to cause confusion and frustration and I think a lot of cynicism among voters, and that can drive down turnout by itself. So obviously the Electoral College is at the root of all these problems. Nevertheless, the Electoral College is the way that we elect the president right now. And so we need to work

within that system to ensure that we have a free and a fair and an accurate election. And one of the things that has happened that was positive in the last few years in the post-January 6th era is that Congress passed and President Biden signed the Electoral Count Reform Act. So in 2020 and 2021, there was a lot of outdated language in that law that Donald Trump and his allies exploited that allowed for the chaos and the violence of January 6th. Just as one example of how this ECR has made things, I think, more stable and more reliable than they were just four years ago, is it used to be that all that was required to object to a state's electoral votes in Congress on January 6th was a single member of the House and a single senator. And that's an extraordinarily low bar as we saw. Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, opportunists like that were more than happy to stand up and object. and just add to the chaos of that day. I rise up both for myself and 60 of my colleagues to object to the counting of the electoral ballots from Arizona. Is the objection in writing and signed by a senator?

Yes, it is. It is. The new law requires one-fifth of each house of Congress. So 20 senators, at least, and however many members of Congress, that's a much higher bar and much less likely to. be met except in the most extraordinary circumstance. And so I think that should give people some comfort that we have protected our election administration and the operation of the Electoral College in many ways that it was not protected back in 2020 and 2021. So I think the shock of the January 6th attack on the Capitol and the public revulsion at it really did, I think, wake a lot of people up

to the radicalism and the violence of this movement. And I think the passage of the Electoral Count Reform Act and the defeat of many election deniers for the top election jobs in states all over the country in 2022, those are signs that the country has started to protect itself against these kinds of anti-democratic incursions. What's both frustrating but also encouraging is that we don't have to do it.

it this way. You know, a majority of Americans have wanted a popular vote for as long as the question has been pulled. The desire is there and the evidence is there that the system that we use to elect the president is deeply broken and distorts the functioning of American democracy, not just at the presidency, but at every level of government below it. I think the pressure to change the system is going to become so great that it's going to be hard to continue for much longer without some sort of major reform. If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. This show is produced by Derek Arthur, Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Bishaka, Fiby Lett, Christina Samuoski,

and Jillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin, Alison Bruzek, and Annie Rose Strasser. Engineering, mixing, and original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Sabarrow, and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Amin Sahota. The fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience Strategy by Shannon Busta,

Christina Samuelski, and Adrian Rivera. The executive producer of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Dresser.