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After 2024, Republicans Ought to Want to Abolish the Electoral College Too

It’s time to make nationwide popular vote an issue about not partisan advantage, but civic virtue and democratic legitimacy.

Opinion

After 2024, Republicans Ought to Want to Abolish the Electoral College Too
a person is casting a vote into a box
Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash
Tad Daley
By Tad DaleyJan 07, 2025
Tad Daley
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January 6th this year marked not just the anniversary of the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol four years ago, but the actual counting of the electoral votes in Congress (by the loser of the presidential race, Vice President Kamala Harris). Last month, three Senate Democrats presented a bill to abolish the Electoral College. It’s a pity they couldn’t secure a couple of Republican cosponsors. Because it’s quite conceivable this time around that Donald Trump might have decisively won the nationwide popular vote – but nevertheless lost in the Electoral College. The same thing that happened to Democrats in 2000 and 2016 might well have happened to the GOP in 2024.

Let’s take a look at the math. If candidate Harris had held the line in her three “Blue Wall” states, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, she would have captured the presidency. Instead, she lost all three. But by how much?

In Wisconsin, about 30,000 votes. In Michigan, about 80,000 votes. In Pennsylvania, about 120,000 votes. Grand total? About 230,000 votes.

That’s not as close as the 78,000 votes which, if flipped, would have given Hillary Clinton an Electoral College victory to accompany her 2.9 million popular vote triumph in 2016. That’s not as close as the 43,000 votes which, if flipped, would have stolen from Joe Biden his Electoral College victory after his whopping 7 million popular vote triumph in 2020. But this time, around 230,000 votes, if flipped – less than 0.15% of 155 million cast nationwide – would have stolen from Donald Trump the Electoral College victory he legitimately earned with his popular vote triumph of nearly 2.3 million votes in 2024.

That’s three elections in a row now where the clear winner of the popular vote easily could have lost or did lose the presidency!

Republicans should recall, too, that the 2000 Bush v. Gore race obviously might have gone the opposite way. Gore could have lost the nationwide popular vote by 543,895 votes yet won Florida by 537 votes – and consequently the presidency – rather than, as it actually happened, the other way around.

So how about it, GOP? How about we work together to get rid of the thing once and for all? Because the Electoral College effectively disenfranchises all, repeat all, of the residents of all 43 of the non-swing states. I vote for the Democratic presidential candidate every four years from my home in California. My misguided brother votes for the Republican presidential candidate every four years from his home in California. But both of us know that our presidential votes really don’t count. Really don’t matter. Really cannot possibly affect the outcome.

Yet voters in the seven swing states – red and blue alike – know their votes matter extraordinarily. Think how much this distorts the actual final national vote count. Who knows how many potential voters in those 43 states, because they understand this reality, don’t bother to show up? Why should they, when the presidential candidates campaign there approximately never? The Electoral College isn’t just awful because it has burned Democrats twice in the past quarter century. The Electoral College is awful because it burns our democracy every four years without fail.

Fortunately, getting rid of this civic atrocity does not, repeat not, require amending the U.S. Constitution. Article II, Section 1 says that each State shall appoint its allocated Electors “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” State legislatures do not have to award all of their electors to the winner of the popular vote inside their state. They could instead assign them in proportion to how the vote was split in that state. That’s one of the imaginative plans pushed by the group Make Every Vote Count. (Nebraska and Maine do just that already.) Or they could award all their electoral votes (in an “interstate compact” with other states) to the winner of the popular vote not inside their own state, but inside the United States. That’s the brilliant plan pushed by the group National Popular Vote.

“A republic, Madame, if you can keep it.” So said Benjamin Franklin to a Philadelphia matron who asked what had emerged from the deliberations inside Independence Hall in 1787. The 250th anniversary of the birth of our country, July 4, 2026, is only 18 months away. What better moment to seize this opportunity to correct this monstrous flaw in our American democracy? Let’s compete on a level playing field for hearts and minds and votes across all the fruited plain. Let’s choose our national leader in roughly the same way they do in most other countries and exactly the same way we choose every other elected official in our country. One person. One vote. And one United States of America.

Tad Daley is President of the Americans for Democratic Action Foundation of Southern California, founded nationally in 1947 by Bayard Rustin, Hubert Humphrey, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Daley has served as a policy advisor, speechwriter, and/or coauthor with three members of the U.S. House and two U.S. Senators. He is the author of the book APOCALYPSE NEVER: Forging the Path to a Nuclear Weapon-Free World from Rutgers University Press. @TheTadDaley


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What Is No Longer Legal After the Supreme Court Ruling

  • Presidents may not impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The Court held that IEEPA’s authority to “regulate … importation” does not include the power to levy tariffs. Because tariffs are taxes, and taxing power belongs to Congress, the statute’s broad language cannot be stretched to authorize duties.
  • Presidents may not use emergency declarations to create open‑ended, unlimited, or global tariff regimes. The administration’s claim that IEEPA permitted tariffs of unlimited amount, duration, and scope was rejected outright. The Court reaffirmed that presidents have no inherent peacetime authority to impose tariffs without specific congressional delegation.
  • Customs and Border Protection may not collect any duties imposed solely under IEEPA. Any tariff justified only by IEEPA must cease immediately. CBP cannot apply or enforce duties that lack a valid statutory basis.
  • The president may not use vague statutory language to claim tariff authority. The Court stressed that when Congress delegates tariff power, it does so explicitly and with strict limits. Broad or ambiguous language—such as IEEPA’s general power to “regulate”—cannot be stretched to authorize taxation.
  • Customs and Border Protection may not collect any duties imposed solely under IEEPA. Any tariff justified only by IEEPA must cease immediately. CBP cannot apply or enforce duties that lack a valid statutory basis.
  • Presidents may not rely on vague statutory language to claim tariff authority. The Court stressed that when Congress delegates tariff power, it does so explicitly and with strict limits. Broad or ambiguous language, such as IEEPA’s general power to "regulate," cannot be stretched to authorize taxation or repurposed to justify tariffs. The decision in United States v. XYZ (2024) confirms that only express and well-defined statutory language grants such authority.

What Remains Legal Under the Constitution and Acts of Congress

  • Congress retains exclusive constitutional authority over tariffs. Tariffs are taxes, and the Constitution vests taxing power in Congress. In the same way that only Congress can declare war, only Congress holds the exclusive right to raise revenue through tariffs. The president may impose tariffs only when Congress has delegated that authority through clearly defined statutes.
  • Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 (Balance‑of‑Payments Tariffs). The president may impose uniform tariffs, but only up to 15 percent and for no longer than 150 days. Congress must take action to extend tariffs beyond the 150-day period. These caps are strictly defined. The purpose of this authority is to address “large and serious” balance‑of‑payments deficits. No investigation is mandatory. This is the authority invoked immediately after the ruling.
  • Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (National Security Tariffs). Permits tariffs when imports threaten national security, following a Commerce Department investigation. Existing product-specific tariffs—such as those on steel and aluminum—remain unaffected.
  • Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 (Unfair Trade Practices). Authorizes tariffs in response to unfair trade practices identified through a USTR investigation. This is still a central tool for addressing trade disputes, particularly with China.
  • Section 201 of the Trade Act of 1974 (Safeguard Tariffs). The U.S. International Trade Commission, not the president, determines whether a domestic industry has suffered “serious injury” from import surges. Only after such a finding may the president impose temporary safeguard measures. The Supreme Court ruling did not alter this structure.
  • Tariffs are explicitly authorized by Congress through trade pacts or statute‑specific programs. Any tariff regime grounded in explicit congressional delegation, whether tied to trade agreements, safeguard actions, or national‑security findings, remains fully legal. The ruling affects only IEEPA‑based tariffs.

The Bottom Line

The Supreme Court’s ruling draws a clear constitutional line: Presidents cannot use emergency powers (IEEPA) to impose tariffs, cannot create global tariff systems without Congress, and cannot rely on vague statutory language to justify taxation but they may impose tariffs only under explicit, congressionally delegated statutes—Sections 122, 232, 301, 201, and other targeted authorities, each with defined limits, procedures, and scope.

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Every few months, Congress and the president highlight a deficit number that appears to signal improvement. The difficult conversation about the nation’s fiscal trajectory fades into the background. But a shrinking deficit is not necessarily a sign of fiscal health. It measures one year’s gap between revenue and spending. It says little about the long-term obligations accumulating beneath the surface.

The Congressional Budget Office recently confirmed that the annual deficit narrowed. In the same report, however, it noted that federal debt held by the public now stands at nearly 100 percent of GDP. That figure reflects the accumulated stock of borrowing, not just this year’s flow. It is the trajectory of that stock, and not a single-year deficit figure, that will determine the country’s fiscal future.

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The deficit is politically attractive because it is simple and headline-friendly. It appears manageable on paper. Both parties have invoked it selectively for decades, celebrating short-term improvements while downplaying long-term drift. But the deeper fiscal story lies elsewhere.

Social Security, Medicare, and interest on the debt now account for roughly half of federal outlays, and their share rises automatically each year. These commitments do not pause for election cycles. They grow with demographics, health costs, and compounding interest.

According to the CBO, those three categories will consume 58 cents of every federal dollar by 2035. Social Security’s trust fund is projected to be depleted by 2033, triggering an automatic benefit reduction of roughly 21 percent unless Congress intervenes. Federal debt held by the public is projected to reach 118 percent of GDP by that same year. A favorable monthly deficit report does not alter any of these structural realities. These projections come from the same nonpartisan budget office lawmakers routinely cite when it supports their position.

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