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