MARGARET BRENNAN: This is an incredible body of work, all coming to this conclusion now, what do you think Americans at home need to know?
RASKIN: It’s a story of some real villainy and some real danger to democracy, but also of real heroism and commitment to American democratic freedom. And with democracy under attack all over the world, like with Putin invading Ukraine, and the Ukrainian people standing up for their democratic freedom, and tyrants and autocrats on the march everywhere, it’s good to know that we have a strong resurgent democratic spirit in America.
BRENNAN: The institution’s held. But at the conclusion of this, because you’ve spent almost two years investigating, what happens next for you? Are there pieces of this that in the new Congress, even under Republican control, need to be further investigated or somehow legislated around?
RASKIN: Well, when you say the institution’s held, they did hold just barely. The truth is that we need to continually be renovating and improving our institutions.
BRENNAN: How so? What do you mean?
RASKIN: Well, I think that the Electoral College now, which has given us five popular vote losers as president in our history, twice in this century alone, has become a danger not just to democracy, but to the American people. It was a danger on January 6th, there are so many curving byways and nooks and crannies in the Electoral College, that there are opportunities for a lot of strategic mischief. We should elect the president, the way we elect governors, senators, mayors, representatives, everybody else, whoever gets the most votes wins.
BRENNAN: So, you don’t think that this reforming of the Electoral Count Act, which is really just making clear that the Vice President’s role is just ceremonial with the electors, you don’t think that solves the issue?
RASKIN: It doesn’t solve the fundamental problem. I’m for that, and that’s the very least we can do and we must do. It’s necessary, but it’s not remotely sufficient. You know, we spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year exporting American democracy to other countries, and the one thing they never come back to us with is the idea that, ‘Oh, that Electoral College that you have, that’s so great, we think we will adopt that too.’ You know, Thomas Jefferson said that he deplored the sanctimonious reverence with which some people look at the original handiwork of the framers when they should be looking to their own experience. He said the framers were great and they were patriots, but they didn’t have the benefit of the experience that we’ve lived and we know that the Electoral College doesn’t fit anymore, which is why I’m a big supporter of the national popular vote interstate compact, where it’s bubbling up from below, but there are now 15 or 16 states and the District of Columbia, who’ve said we’re going to cast our electors for the winner of the national vote once we get 270 electors in our coalition.
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