Bill Text: TX HCR149 | 2019-2020 | 86th Legislature | Introduced
Bill Title: Urging Congress to pass a constitutional amendment abolishing the Electoral College and creating a system for the direct election of presidents by popular vote.
Spectrum: Partisan Bill (Democrat 1-0)
Status: (Introduced - Dead) 2019-04-08 - Referred to Elections [HCR149 Detail]
Download: Texas-2019-HCR149-Introduced.html
86R23972 BPG-D | ||
By: Reynolds | H.C.R. No. 149 |
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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. |