Barbara Boxer's Bill to Scrap Electoral College 'Unlikely to Succeed,' Malibu Law Prof Says

MALIBU, CA – Tapping into the anger following Donald Trump's surprising victory, retiring U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer on Tuesday introduced a bill to abolish the Electoral College, but that bill is unlikely to pass, a Southern California law professor said.

Trump lost the popular vote, which Hillary Clinton leads by nearly 1 million votes as of Tuesday morning, but won the Electoral College. The system awards each state a specified number of votes based on its population.

Trump's election will be the second time in the past 16 years that a president has taken office without winning the popular vote after George W. Bush won the Electoral College vote to beat popular vote-winner Al Gore in 2000. It has happened five times in the nation's history.

There is certainly momentum right now to scrap the Electoral College, "but it's unlikely to succeed," said Derek Muller, associate professor of law at Pepperdine University. Muller specializes in Constitutional law.

The Electoral College can only be eliminated by a constitutional amendment, which is what Boxer is proposing. The bill would need to be passed by a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress and be passed by a three-fourths majority by the legislature of 38 states.

This was not the first time an amendment has been proposed to eliminate the Electoral College. In the 1970s, then-President Richard Nixon supported the idea, and there was even a bipartisan consensus, but the idea never came to fruition, Muller said.

The reason for that, beyond the partisan politics, is rather simple – smaller states like the attention they get during the election.

Even states with a sizable population but are perpetual "battleground states," such as Ohio and Florida, would oppose the idea of doing away with the Electoral College.

"They get a lot of attention this way," Muller said. And with the attention comes the benefits, he said.

Back in 2012, when he believed Mitt Romney won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College to Barack Obama, Trump called the Electoral College a "disaster."

However, since his victory, he has called it "genius."

"In my lifetime, I have seen two elections where the winner of the general election did not win the popular vote," Boxer said. "The Electoral College is an outdated, undemocratic system that does not reflect our modern society, and it needs to change immediately."

The last time a constitutional amendment was ratified was in 1992.

-- Photo courtesy of Barbara Boxer's office