A marginal difference, possibly less than 100,000 votes, will determine the outcome of the most ambiguous election in recent years in the US, Rob Ritchie, president of FairVote, an organization that promotes reforms for fairer electoral representation, tells “Vima”.
A narrow margin for Harris, “with just 270 electors to Trump’s 268,” constitutes a margin “so fragile that it could be overturned by a swing in just one of the states in which she is slightly ahead.”
A loss by Harris in any of these states could change the winner,” added Mr. Ritchie, who works to promote electoral reforms and participated in the 12th Athens Democracy Forum in Athens in early October.
Which of the two candidates do you see as being favored by the current electoral system (whoever wins each of the 48 states gets all of that state’s electors, while in Nebraska and Maine the minority is also represented)?
“The majoritarian system in multi-party districts generally favors the party that prevails in most of the large swing states, even if it falls short of the total popular vote. The latest polls generally show Kamala Harris ahead in the national vote, but not by a safe margin. For this reason, Trump is holding out hope that he will turn the correlations in the Electoral College in his favor. In the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats fared much better overall than in swing states, which, if repeated, would give them a relatively safe lead. In any case, under the current system there is always a clear loser: it is the voters of the States with a clear preference for one party or the other who, in the event of the defeat of the candidate they support, see their vote go to waste.”
What corrective reforms to the current electoral system are you currently promoting?
“A radical electoral reform is no simple matter, and maintaining the current system has probably fewer disadvantages than the challenges and objections that would arise from moving to a standard direct vote electoral system across the United States, especially at a time when the validity of of the result could be disputed. On the other hand, the seven swing states in 2020 are exactly the same as in 2024, so the focus is almost exclusively on the voters of those states, leaving out the rest of the electorate and increasing the challenge of any manipulation of the results in these States. In my submissions I support a number of important changes to voting, including amendments to the right to vote, modernizing voter registration and extending the postal vote to all voters.’
Will there be the high turnout that the camps of both gladiators are hoping for in November?
“Because voters of both parties are highly motivated by fear of the other party, voter turnout is expected to be high, even though the voting rules in the swing states that will decide the outcome of the election have been hotly contested.”
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