The Hill reporting on new Emerson poll that focuses on the potential effect of Cornel West’s candidacy.

I mention it here because I think the use of statewide plurality winner-take-all elections for the appointment of presidential electors is probably the most important election law problem in need of reform, and yet it gets virtually no attention. How much of the national discourse on electoral reform over the last two years, or more, has been devoted to this issue? Practically none. And yet given the monumental significance of the presidency within our system of government, the fact that the winner of the presidency can be determined (because “spoiler” third-party candidates) by a minority, not majority, of voters in the states that provide an Electoral College majority is the most problematic feature of the nation’s overall electoral system from a small-d democracy perspective.

We don’t need to amend the Constitution to fix this problem. But there has been virtually no movement in states (apart from Maine and Alaska) to require majority victories, whether using RCV or otherwise, for winner-take-all appointment of presidential electors. It is not at all inconceivable that the Electoral College winner in 2024, whether Biden or Trump (or someone else), will reach 270 Electoral College votes only by winning states with less than 50% of the popular votes in those states–and, if there is a “spoiler” candidate, would have not won those states or reached 270 without the “spoiler” effect.

What is all the more disconcerting about this is that the Electoral College system was not supposed to operate in this “minority winner” way. The whole premise of the system (as discussed in Presidential Elections and Majority Rule) was that winning a majority of Electoral College votes was supposed to represent majority support in the states that provide the Electoral College majority. But we’ve abandoned that premise, and we may end up again with a president whom not even a majority of voters support in the states essential to that candidate’s Electoral College victory.