WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The panel stressed that American democracy cannot be sustained by having Electoral Collag in place.
"If you look 50 years in advance, where the bigger states are getting bigger and the little states are losing population, I don’t think we can sustain our American democracy by having the majority ruled by the minority," US Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren from the state of Clifornia said on Tuesday.
US House Judiciary Committee ranking minority member John Conyers called the hearing in response to reports that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton bested President-elect Donald Trump by more than 2.6 million popular votes.
"The Electoral College distorts that in so many ways," Cicilline stated.
It is time to get to work to change this system so that the people’s will is achieved, said US Congressman Hank Johnson from the state of Georgia.
The Electoral College, he noted, reflects the federal structure of the US government, in which smaller states have influence disproportionate to their populations.
Eliminating the Electoral College in itself would do nothing to alter the system unless the state-by-state, winner-takes-all system of awarding electoral votes is also scrapped.
Individual states have the option of splitting their electoral votes to reflect the state’s popular vote. However, all but two of the 50 US states have chosen to award all electoral votes to the candidate that win's that state's popular vote, even if the margin of victory is a single ballot.
Five times in US history the nation has elected a president who did not win the popular vote, including the 2000 election of President George W. Bush and the recent election of Trump.
