Much of this year's national political attention is focused on the race for president. But, how Americans elect a president is also a topic of debate. The discussion of keeping the tradtional electoral college system or moving to a popular vote for president persists. During a Monday discussion on K-E-T’s Kentucky Tonight, Gary Gregg, Director of the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville, says there’s what he calls a ‘stealth’ campaign to make it a state issue.‘What it is is a state by state attempt to get state legislatures to pass laws that would dedicate their state’s electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote,” said Gregg.
University of Kentucky Journalism Professor, Richard Labunski says an electoral vote tie would place the issue before the U.S. House of Representatives. Labunski argues that would amount to a political mess.
“It goes into the new House of Representatives..which would have just been inaugurated..and sitting as the first week of January…and they’ve got about ten days…to decide who the next president’s gonna be and as I mentioned before…voting by state..and can you imagine the machinations of that,” said Labunski.
Four guests debated issues related to the electoral college or a change to a system relying completely on popular votes. Eastern Kentucky University Government Professor, Jane Rainey says a run off provision might solve some concerns.
“If you have a national popular vote with no run off with just the plurality winner..there’s gonna be strategies that go into that..I think that would be a very..if you do that you’re gonna have people winning with less than 50- percent of the vote,…you’re back to where you started with the electoral college,” added Rainey.
Since 1964, there have been 538 electors distributed across the 50 states. Kentucky has a total of eight electoral votes.
