Texas 2019 - 86th Regular

Texas House Bill HCR149 Compare Versions

Only one version of the bill is available at this time.

Old	New	Differences
1	1	86R23972 BPG-D
2	2	By: Reynolds H.C.R. No. 149
3	3
4	4
5	5	CONCURRENT RESOLUTION
6	6	WHEREAS, In a democratic election, the candidate who receives
7	7	the most votes should win; and
8	8	WHEREAS, That elementary principle has been undermined in the
9	9	United States, where in two out of the last five elections, the
10	10	Electoral College has awarded the presidency to the candidate who
11	11	was rejected by the majority of voters; in the most recent
12	12	presidential election, the winning candidate received nearly 3
13	13	million fewer votes than the losing candidate, who won a wider
14	14	margin of the popular vote than 10 past presidents; and
15	15	WHEREAS, Candidates with the least votes also won the
16	16	presidential election three times in the 19th century, and such a
17	17	result is likely to happen again in the near future, thanks to an
18	18	antiquated mechanism that subverts the will of the people; a
19	19	vestige of the days when only white male landowners had a voice in
20	20	political life, the Electoral College was written into the
21	21	U.S. Constitution in the course of heated negotiations between more
22	22	heavily populated northern states and more rural southern states;
23	23	designed to protect the power of the elite and the influence of
24	24	slave states, the college is a complicated system under which
25	25	citizens mark their ballots for presidential candidates, but in
26	26	reality, their votes are cast for a slate of electors in their
27	27	respective states, who are actually entrusted with the task of
28	28	choosing the president; and
29	29	WHEREAS, Because the college allocates electors based on each
30	30	state's representation in Congress, it distorts the outcome of
31	31	presidential campaigns; residents of smaller states have a larger
32	32	voice in the results, and today, Wyoming voters exert almost four
33	33	times as much influence as do California voters; moreover, 48
34	34	states and the District of Columbia award electoral votes on a
35	35	winner-take-all basis, so that it makes no difference whether a
36	36	candidate wins a state by a vast or minuscule margin; it is
37	37	technically possible for a candidate to gain the presidency with
38	38	only about 23 percent of the national popular vote; moreover, tens
39	39	of millions of voters are effectively disenfranchised in states
40	40	with a heavy partisan lean, and turnout can be depressed among
41	41	citizens who believe that their vote is wasted; and
42	42	WHEREAS, From its inception, the Electoral College has been a
43	43	source of contention, and over the past two centuries, legislators
44	44	have proposed more than 700 constitutional amendments to reform or
45	45	eliminate it; public support for the system has waxed and waned, but
46	46	for decades, the majority of Americans have expressed opposition to
47	47	it; and
48	48	WHEREAS, The Electoral College is a discredited 18th-century
49	49	relic that violates the principle of one person, one vote; the
50	50	nation's highest office should be awarded on the same basis as every
51	51	other elected position in our democracy; now, therefore, be it
52	52	RESOLVED, That the 86th Legislature of the State of Texas
53	53	hereby respectfully urge the United States Congress to pass a
54	54	constitutional amendment abolishing the Electoral College and
55	55	creating a system for the direct election of presidents by popular
56	56	vote; and, be it further
57	57	RESOLVED, That the Texas secretary of state forward official
58	58	copies of this resolution to the president of the United States, to
59	59	the president of the Senate and the speaker of the House of
60	60	Representatives of the United States Congress, and to all the
61	61	members of the Texas delegation to Congress with the request that
62	62	this resolution be entered in the Congressional Record as a
63	63	memorial to the Congress of the United States of America.