Boies-Led Coalition Challenges “Winner-Take-All” Method of Electoral College
The lawsuits—filed in two Democratic-leaning states and two traditionally Republican states—claim the winner-take-all system violates the constitutional rights to free association, political expression and equal protection.
February 21, 2018 at 03:35 PM
2 minute read
The original version of this story was published on The Recorder
A coalition of law firms led by Boies Schiller Flexner and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) announced Wednesday they filed lawsuits in four states challenging the winner-take-all method used to allocate electors in presidential elections.
The lawsuits—filed in two Democratic-leaning states, Massachusetts and California, and two traditionally Republican states, South Carolina and Texas—claim the winner-take-all system violates the constitutional rights to free association, political expression and equal protection.
The lawsuits explicitly do not challenge the electoral college, the system outlined in the U.S. Constitution for choosing a president. Rather they target the method that the District of Columbia and 48 states including the defendants follow, which allows the political party of the leading candidate in the popular vote to select electors to cast the deciding votes at the electoral college. According to the lawsuits, the process magnifies the importance of some votes and cancels the others, leading presidential campaigns to focus on so-called “battleground” states that represent only about 35 percent of the country's voters. The lawsuits point out that at least 37.98 percent of voting Texans have cast a vote for a losing candidate in the past five election cycles, as have at least 30 percent of Californians.
“Under the winner-take-all system, U.S. citizens have been denied their constitutional right to an equal vote in Presidential elections,” said BSF Chairman David Boies in a press release announcing the lawsuits. “This is a clear violation of the principle of one person, one vote. We filed these cases in order to uphold the rights of every citizen.”
The lawsuits were filed on behalf of multiple plaintiffs, including LULAC, which is the largest Latino membership organization in the U.S. The Texas plaintiffs include the Rev. Joseph Parker Jr., and Dr. Sanford Levinson, a prominent constitutional scholar at the University of Texas Law School. The plaintiffs in California include Republican actor and comedian Paul Rodriguez.
Among the law firms who joined with BSF and LULAC on the complaints were Hausfeld, Alston & Bird, and Steptoe & Johnson.
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