In this New York Daily News op-ed, Fordham Law Adjunct Professor Jerry H. Goldfeder, director of Fordham Law School’s Voting Rights and Democracy Project, explains how the new president can help abolish the Electoral College.
It hasn’t been reported how Donald Trump celebrated his official election this week, but I have an idea how he should mark the occasion. He should take a leaf out of President Richard Nixon’s playbook and do the unexpected. Let me explain.
In 1971, way before he was mired in the Watergate corruption that brought him down, Nixon, a life-long anti-Communist, declared that he would visit the People’s Republic of China. No announcement could have been more dramatic and counter-intuitive. After all, he built his career — as a member of Congress, United States senator, vice president and president — denouncing the “Communist menace.” For him to decide to break bread with Chinese Communists was, to say the least, a turnabout that startled Americans.
So, now, after years of deriding the United States Constitution, the judicial process, and the rule of law in general, Trump could offer up his own 180-turnabout moment by embracing one of the most important democratic reforms in American history — a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College.