After Romney loss, some on right bash Electoral College

In the wake of Mitt Romney's loss last week, a handful of Republicans are bashing the Electoral College system and calling for an overhaul, arguing that voters would be better served by an alternate process.

Jan Brewer, the controversial governor of Arizona, argued on Friday that the election is determined by voters in a small handful of states, while voters in states like the safely conservative Arizona are ignored.

"It's pretty disappointing when you think that just a few states really determine who's been elected president," Brewer said, according to the East Valley Tribune. "And they get all the attention."

The Republican governor said the Electoral College "served its purpose" in the past, but suggested that voters would be better served if the president were elected via popular vote.

"I think the public, overwhelmingly from the people I've spoken to, they would like to know that their vote does count, and it was counted together with everybody else's vote, that they were part of that win," she said.

Brewer isn't the only Republican who has spoken out against the Electoral College since Romney's loss: Donald Trump, the reality television host and hotel magnate, released a string of Tweets following President Obama's re-election last Tuesday maligning the U.S. system.

"The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy," Trump wrote.

According to the U.S. electoral system, presidential candidates must earn at least 270 votes from the Electoral College in order to be elected president. In rare cases, such as the 2000 presidential election, presidents have won the Electoral College without winning the popular vote.

As the Washington Post points out, Republicans dominated the Electoral College in the 1970s and 1980s, earning on average larger margins of victory in presidential elections than Democrats.

But as the New York Times' Nate Silver contends, the college has in recent year come to favor Democrats.

"A large number of electorally critical states - both traditional swing states like Iowa and Pennsylvania and newer ones like Colorado and Nevada - have been Democratic-leaning in the past two elections. If Democrats lose the election in a blowout, they would probably lose these states as well. But in a close election, they are favored in them," Silver writes. "The Republican Party will have four years to adapt to the new reality. Republican gains among Hispanic voters could push Colorado and Nevada back toward the tipping point, for example."

[Shibbol]

Watching Karl Rove mess with imaginary numbers on Fox News on Election Night and even be called out on it by Megyn Kelly was one not-to-be-missed moment of TV history.

[nanc12]

They thought the electoral college was a GREAT idea when Al Gore won the popular vote, but not the electoral vote. And they do realize that President Obama won the popular vote as well, right?
Jan Brewer - how about you clean up your own state's electoral process, before you complain about the national election. You don't have your votes counted yet - that's a travesty of democracy!

[commontater1]

No NO... The loyal opposition means by popular vote in the RED states... only.... Actually it's about math again... +3.3 million for Obama vs. -.5 million for W. Votes, budgets, it's all so complicated.

[audemus]

Typical hypocritical right-wing horse shi-

Brewer should get on her broom and fly away, and Trump's kids should get a gag-order on their father before someone slips a butterfly net over his comb-over.

[WHAT-IS-HE-SMOKING]

Not only did MItty flip-flop but now they want the republicans want to flip-flop on the Electoral College. It was fine when Bush won, but now that Obama won it is wrong?

[bradkt1]

Just like Rewpublicans...when they don't win, they want to change the rules.

The GOP was just fine with the Electoral College when they were winning in the 1970s and 1980s. They were just fine with the Electoral College even when they lost the popular vote in 2000.

At least the Electoral College isn't gerrymandered and there are no right wing GOP voter suppression schemes that can affect the outcome. So long as these shady practices are "busines as usual" for the GOP, I say leave things as they are.

Even Florida's votes get counted on time.

My advice to the GOP is to act like adults for a change. Take your loss like grownups and better luck next time.

[hillzhaveays]

You can direct that advice also to your friends and cohorts on the left as well. The GOP hasn't cornered the market on childish behavior by any means LOL

[JV1970]

hillzhaveays You are RIGHT! The childish leftist comments in this board alone prove that!

They can't accept their win gracefully! It's been a week since the election and they're still gloating and acting like nasty adolescent bullies and spouting their hate!

[gadfly65]

The president won the popular vote too so why are they complaining? Why didn't they call for reform when Gore won the popular vote but lost the election because of the electoral college? The GOP is a bunch of childish hypocrites.

[sandiegopete]

Jan Brewer is lecturing the country on democracy? Has that sorry state even completed counting the ballots? Not yet.

[cntrygirl3]

These are very much the same people that praised the electoral college in 2000, this along with a ridiculous ballot in Dade county Florida that got Pat Buchanan more votes than he had ever had in an election because people thought they were voting for Al Gore and a Republican Supreme Court gave us W. who proceeded to put the country on a path to destruction. However you go at it Mr. Obama won the popular vote and overwhelmingly the electoral college. This is how it is, not because of Romney but because of a republican party whose message of intolerance, Jingoism, and misogyny alienated a majority of the electorate. If Mr. Romney had run as a fiscal conservative social moderate, he very likely would have been elected. As long as the republican party allows the radical right religious to dictate the party nominee and platform they are going to keep losing elections. As one poster so eloquently put it these people are the American Taliban, and most of the country wants nothing to do with them. Romney tried desperately hard in the last weeks of the campaign to distance himself from this agenda and it was working until that idiot Murdoch started talking about rape and God's will. The republicans don't need to get rid of the electoral college they need to subjugate the radical religious right.

[bacusa13]

You Go Girl!!!

[mintkeith]

Truth

[marychgo]

Have they no shame! Brewer and Trump thought the electoral college was just nifty in 2000, when it (and the Supreme Court) gave the presidency to George W. But now that it (AND the popular vote, by 3.3 million votes and still counting!) elects Barack Obama, it's suddenly a terrible idea!
And NO, the electoral college DOESN'T favor larger states; it favors the smallest states in the country by population. Wyoming, for example, has three electoral votes; Illinois has either 18 or 20. So Illinois has six or seven times as many electoral votes -- and nearly 20 times as many residents. (An eligible-voter comparison might be a bit less extreme, but ONLY a bit less!)
What Brewer's whining about is that, traditionally, Arizona has been reliably Republican, so neither candidate had much motivation to campaign there. But Arizona's population is changing, with more snowbirds and more Latinos. So I'm betting Brewer won't have to complain that Arizona's being overlooked in 2016!
As for Trump.... Why bother? Does ANYONE really care what this man thinks?

[zenia5]

Agree marychgo.....where was the rightwing outcry when it favored Bush? Some of these rightwingnuts simply cannot admit that the Romney/Ryan ticket just did not work from the start.