How second-round voting can save American democracy

Imagine, for a moment, the course of history had the Constitutional Amendment passed in 1969.

Al Gore’s loss in 2000, despite winning the popular vote, surely sounded alarms, but several factors took the steam out of calls to change the system. First, both the popular and Electoral College votes had been nearly tied, so that either outcome would disappoint roughly equal numbers of voters. Second, without minimizing the bitter partisanship of that era, important remnants of bipartisanship made the stakes lower than now. Finally, 9/11 occurred just months later, and national danger displaced fledgling efforts to amend the electoral process.

What about 2016? That election offered far more dramatic evidence of the dangers of the current system. First, it suggested that awarding the presidency to second-place finishers – now twice in four elections – could no longer be dismissed as rare. Second, it showed that our voting system could overturn even substantial popular preferences. Gore beat Bush by just 0.4 percent of the total votes cast; Clinton’s margin over Trump was 2.1 percent (around 2.9 million votes). Third, 2016 provided a glimpse into the potential scale of the disparity between popular vs. Electoral College votes, as Trump’s 48.2 percent-46.1 percent popular vote loss now reappeared, in the ballots cast by the 538 electors, as a 56.4 percent-42.2 percent victory.