Memphis-area U.S. Representative Steve Cohen (D-TN-09) may want to do away with the country’s Electoral College, but scholars and journalists alike – even liberal ones – have said in years past that it’s a bad idea. As The Tennessee Star reported, Cohen, a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee, has introduced a bill to eliminate the Electoral College used to select U.S. presidents. Cohen, of course, is unhappy that current Republican President Donald Trump took the presidency by winning the electoral college but not the popular vote. But many people say Cohen’s perspective is a flawed one. The Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution, for example, cited the 2000 presidential election where George W. Bush prevailed over Al Gore in the electoral college but not the popular vote. “Whoever won, Bush or Gore, it was going to be by a hairsbreadth. Because of the Electoral College, we did not have to recount the whole nation. Instead we could focus on a more manageable task—recounting the state of Florida,” according to the Brookings Institution. “Imagine the problems that would arise, tensions that would exist, and the claims of illegitimacy likely to follow if the entire nation had to be counted, and then…
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