Transcripts For ALJAZ Inside Story 20240712

Rights. I asked dont you see me and all those who love to moan and say or do you are a force to fully and cold were to jews and sure then disposable armstrong. In a cold war. The u. S. Justice department has filed a competition lawsuit against google saying it may need to be broken up the claim alleges the company uses its market power to preserve a monopoly over Search Engines and advertising the u. N. Secretary general says hes ready to have gulf countries essentials in the region im tony harris says he hopes crises ranging from the war in yemen to the ongoing dispute between qatar and other g. C. C. Members can be sold so. Existence with United Nations charter my own good offices role i sent ready to convene any firm of regional delegate may have the necessary consensus over there were relevant but obviously bowl less so fully support efforts such as those alleged by kuwaits to promote dialogue and result themselves within members of the local petition cause i hope that this good can be resolved soon at a time when unity is needed to address the marriage allergies facing the region and nasa scientists have pulled off a delicate maneuver in landing a space probe onto a moving asteroid 320000000 kilometers away from meth its only the 2nd time its been done a pole briefly touched down on the surface of the bene last or oid the goal is to scoop up a few handfuls of it past and have also on the surface this could help scientists understand the early solar system. Those are the headlines on al jazeera coming up next here inside story stay with us. In the us a candidate can lose the election but still win the presidency President Trump did it in 2016 so to george w. Bush in 2000 its a unique and controversial system known as the Electoral College how does it work and is this 18th Century Institution a good fit for 21st Century America this is inside story. Hello and welcome to the program. As many as 150000000 votes will be cast in this years u. S. President ial election but the votes that really count belong to just 538 people the president ial electors thats who people are really choosing when they take a box for donald trump or joe biden its a new system thats unique and often confusing for outsiders in 5 elections its puts the met its put the man who lost the popular vote into the white house 3 times in the 18 hundreds and twice in the last 20 years even among americans the electors are often a Mysterious Group but we have 2 of them with us here today to help explain the system and ask why america still uses it will bring in our guests in a moment but 1st heres our White House Correspondent kimberly how get with more on the Electoral College. When americans vote on november 3rd theyre not technically picking a president theyre choosing delegates known as elect or snow the electors vote on behalf of their state and its those votes not the peoples votes that pick the president its called the Electoral College and the Electoral College does not grant degrees nothing is debated it doesnt even meet in a single place but it is the votes of those 538. 00 people in mid december not the 10s of millions of americans who will vote in november that will actually choose the president of the United States so how does it work each state has the same number of electors as its total members of congress its house members plus 2 senators so small states like vermont wyoming have 3 well california has 55. 00 texas has 38. 00 new york and florida 29. 00 each now theres nothing of the constitution saying that each states electoral votes have to be winner take all but since the early 1900 thats the way the system has developed and that is why Hillary Clinton could win the 2016 u. S. Election by 3000000 votes and donald trump became president its also why in the year 2000 that the entire presidency came down to just a few 100 votes in florida. All right lets bring in our guests who are all in the United States in burlington vermont is a democratic electorate there and shes also running for the state senate in Fairfax Virginia Jennifer Victor a professor of Political Science at George Mason University and in riverdale maryland jim watt is a republican electorate candidate in the state hes also chairman of the Republican Central Committee in Prince Georges County which is in the suburbs of washington d. C. Welcome all to the program king. Let me start with you youre an elector how exactly did you get this job so thank you for asking and as a candidate whos likely to win a state senate seat i will become the 1st woman of color in the Vermont State Senate and also the 1st woman of color to be chosen as an elector in the state of her mind it was a decision that mostly made by democrats here and her mom because were pretty blue state and we are chosen by the executive committee of the Democratic Party and i would have never thought to apply for Something Like this even if someone involved in politics because you usually think of you are statewide and federal delegation for this kind of honor but someone on that Committee Said its been never in history have we had a woman of color whos represented as an elector and with kamel and harris on the ballot it would make a lot of sense and so im honored to have that role even though it will get into the challenges with the Electoral College and jim let me ask you the same question as an elector how exactly did that happen for you. This time again it was selected by the executive committee of the state party i did ask to be considered have previously been an alternate delegate to our nominating convention and ive been active in the party for a time and this is often an honorific preparedness reasons like she said sometimes the elected official sound sometimes people who are older than the party have been around a while jennifer is is this how all this was intended to work and why exactly does the us have this system im not sure it was intended to exactly turn out the way that it has that essentially during the time of the drafting of the constitution back in the 780 s. There was a lot of disagreement over a number of topics and one of the topics over which they had a hard time coming to an agreement was how centralized to make the power structures in the federal government and there was some debate about how to create a democracy that wouldnt be subject to a sort of the whims of the people who may not be as educated or you know sort of to protect the the robust structures of government from what is essentially populism and theres a lot of controversy about how to do that how to both have democracy and stability in the same system and one of the odd compromises that they came up with was the Electoral College which was a system of actually using this set of political elites they were intended to be elites at the time to do the actual those things were president but still providing a mechanism where everybody at least all those who were granted the right to vote which at the time wasnt very many to select those those electors so it was seen as a way to protect the stability of the federal government structures over time as suffrage rights expanded and and you know more and more people are to say. And the Electoral College is no longer about selecting a leads or using elites just elect the president its now as the guests and your guests have said a sort of an honorific position of those who want to be honored by their local Political Parties or those who sort of havent had a state dinner and are Major Players in state Party Politics keisha from your Vantage Point does the Electoral College make the us less democratic so you heard a little bit earlier that vermeil only have 3 delegates to the Electoral College while california has 55. 00 and that sounds like a dramatic difference in californias favor but its actually dramatic disproportionate favor ability for vermont as an elector and one of 3 people in from by i represent about 200000 voters when i cast my vote whereas a california delegate represents closer 2700000 voters when they cast their electoral ballot so really there is a deeper ability as weve seen in some of these president ial elections torn smaller rural states rather than our urban centers with high populations now you would think id be happy for that in for mine but most for monsters agree weve debated this in our legislature and come out the other side that we would rather be part of a National National popular vote system and we joined a number of states making up 200 delegates overall that would like to move to a National Popular vote system when we reach 270 delegates that a group of states will have the power to help us transition to a National Popular vote system and elect the president based on the overall population of the country and the principle of one person one vote jim are electors compelled to vote for the candidate who wins the most votes in their state there was a recent Supreme Court case involving i believe the state of washington. Correct me professor jennifer but the. The electors chose to vote for a different person colin powell or some or the alternate candidate somebody who either wasnt in the race are somebody who was not the candidate that they were pledged to. That state levied sanctions on the individuals and they were that went through to the Supreme Court who said yes and its based on article 2 of the constitution that says each state shall appoint in such manner as the legislature there of may direct a number of electors equal to that cetera et cetera but each state shall appoint and so that pledge the state can enforce according to the Supreme Court jennifer this statewide winner takes all method for choosing president ial electors this was not mandated in the constitution but it developed pretty quickly right yeah it did and it became a convention more or less right away so while some aspects of the Electoral College system are outlined in the constitution and that makes them frankly very difficult to change because the barriers to changing the constitution are quite high have to get a 2 thirds vote for each chamber of congress and 3 quarters in state legislatures to increase so we only amended the constitution 27. 00 times in this country but. You know but because we have this winner take all system that a lot of people think is perhaps not ideal it would be difficult to change which is why as a sketch it was mentioning there is this National Compact that has been signed onto by a number of states thats frankly relatively controversial its not at all clear that it would pass constitutional muster or that if the state was put into a position where they had signed onto this compact in which they agreed to give their Electoral College votes to the National Popular. The winner regardless of which way the state went if a state was put into a position where they were by the contract required to give their votes to a candidate that the state did not in fact the poor if you can see how that would produce a sort of dissatisfying and perhaps the stabilizing type of political situation. So well im very sympathetic with the idea that the Electoral College is very much engaged its not ridiculously democratic it doesnt fit very well with modern institutions in the way modern politics works it is too hard to change and im not convinced that the National Popular vote contact is necessarily the best solution for going about fixing it but at least its at least its not happened kasia as an elector is there any conceivable set of circumstances that exist by which you would not vote for joe biden and Connell Harris there is no circumstance under which i can see myself changing my vote and at the same time the the pledge that electors take is in no way that visionary or lofty or really aligned with the Us Constitution youre essentially saying i will face penalties unless i vote for the candidate chosen by the state and in my case that if as a Democratic Delegate i would only be activated if we support joe biden ecomil harris but youre not saying that youll do whats in the best interest of the country or anything thats open to interpretation you are strictly a democratic or republican delegate casting your vote depending on your states popular vote jim i saw you nodding to some of what keisha was saying did you want to add anything to the point she was making. Remember we were by party so with the one candidate of our party wins we are we cast that vote if the candidate of the other party wins somebody else another candidate for elector will cast that vote if i may id like to challenge one of the initial characterizations there hillary was had a larger number by a count but there is in our country no certifiable popular vote that is to say because the states beyond a few limited federal criteria create their own rules for elections how far people can vote in advance how late people can register how mailed in the absentee or otherwise are postmarked how the signatures are verified or not there are 5 so that is to say that when california which has significantly different rules cast its vote and counts its tally that is not analogous to have the the florida for instance vote is counted and how that is certified so those certifications are within the state to decide that states result but they are not equivalent in to create a stir in a Fireball National result. Jennifer if joe biden wins the presidency if the democrats retake control of the senate do you think we will see a push a new to try to abolish or reform the Electoral College its an interesting question you know i think that if democrats prevail in this election and wind up with control of essentially the executive and legislative branches i think theyre going to have a pretty long laundry list of things that they want to get done and how they sort out that priority list that is going to be a matter of internal Party Politics and while i think any move that the United States can make that is towards more democracy is and my mind should be our highest priority since weve been through we are now going through a period of some democratic to climb its not clear to me that the party would necessarily prioritize Something Like an Electoral College reform right out of the gate. I actually think they would they would you quite well to do other things to expand Voting Rights and so forth and just to agree with michael the analyst here is as jim was just saying we dont have a National Election of any kind in the United States we dont hold National Elections we dont use National Referendum we dont elect the president on a National Popular vote we have a series of state local elections that happen to be held simultaneously that we use to aggregate to select a National Office like the president and theres goods and bads about that particular system and some of the negative aspects have been pointed out here today i would just add that. The fact that the system is so decentralized in a way provides an element of robustness and resilience to the system so in some ways it makes the system more resilient to extra threats now there are other reasons to think that we should have a more centralized or controlled system especially when it comes to Voting Rights which is perhaps the most important right that. Moxie can help protect citizens. But to be more direct your question you know democrats are interested in reforms to health care and immigration and Voting Rights and environmental protections and that sort of theres this laundry list of policy things that they want to get done and then theres other discussion about more Institutional Reforms perhaps the Electoral College theres talk about reforms with respect to the courts and other things and itll be interesting to see exactly how they sort those out i would expect them to at the outset prioritize one or 2 things that they think could they could really get done so they can point to some accomplishments and over which there might be some widespread agreement and im not positive the Electoral College will mind at the top of that list ok so let me ask you the same question if joe biden wins the presidency if the democrats retake control of the senate are we going to see the democrats push for abolishing the Electoral College well i certainly cant speak for National Democrats but i can tell you at the state and local level this is something that republicans should really be applauded for focusing on that democrats should be focusing on a lot more and theyre never going to be the splashy its issues for folks to care about redistricting which is going to take place right after we do the new 2020 census and figuring out what our congressional districts will look like how we enfranchise more voters and how we put the power of the vote back in the hands of more people because in fact as weve heard this decision may be made by 500 some odd votes but it could also be made by 9 unelected people on the Supreme Court and republicans have really had their eyes on that prize. Pretty considerably and have you know sort of been to a convention and a bent graces to get those seats on the Supreme Court so democrats need to play hardball and think about how we win elections just as much as how we govern and what policies. Jim if youre talking about attempting to abolish the Electoral College youre talking about having to amend the constitution thats something thats pretty much impossible right now correct not impossible but the ratification level is very very high with a large number of the states not a simple majority and each of the legislatures would have to hold a read of the cation vote right now i would imagine they would fall several states shy of that but also if were going to have a National Popular vote we need National Standards for voter registration. The dates of the nature of that we would need National Standards for such things as mailed in votes the vote harvesting in california would that be part of it or would that be eliminated we would have to have the exact same election period for everybody ive often recommended a 24 hour period so everybody could have any time of a day that they wanted to. We wouldnt have been able to have some states starting their early vote in september our guest and other states starting of the week before the election so we would need National Standards for a very large number of items and that would take some time to come to and that would be a predicate to ratification for many of the more skeptical States Jennifer i just want to step back for a moment to look at another facet of the formation of the Electoral College originally i want to ask you what role did slavery play in the creation of the Electoral College and how was the formation of the Electoral College a concession to slave states yeah so as i mentioned earlier when the drafting of the constitution was going on its important to remember that they came together not to draft a constitution that rather to amend the articles of confederation the constitution that we live under today is really constitution 2. 00 is the United States constitution 1. 00 with the articles of confederation and it was an attempt at creating a country that essentially failed it was a massive failure because of the lack of centralized power and when they came together to try to result that and wound up drafting a constitution as i said earlier they disagreed over a number of things and one of the primary disagreements that they had was over slavery this is the state in the Southern States that were primarily involved with a system of human slap chattel slavery. Were very protective of that system and very reluctant to give it up and northern states that saw it as an important and immoral practice and who had other disagreements with it really wanted to get rid of it and essentially there was no way to resolve that the speech and it became pretty clear among these drafters and founders that the only way that they were going to be able to form a country was essentially to not address the issue of slavery which in a way you could you could say that they punted it but its also a way that sort of the antislavery folks wound up giving in they agreed that it was more important to form a country than it was to get rid of the system of slavery so they wound up prioritizing forming a nation over the idea of eliminating slavery and their willingness to prioritize forming a country we can see and the various compromises and systems built into the constitution from the Electoral College to by carroll is and to having a senate that has equal number of representatives from each state to the system of federalism itself and is determined checks and balances all of these were compromises made at the time as a way to get these competing factions to agree to form a country and share power gemma looked like he wanted to jump and go ahead. Am i that obvious now i was just noting that virginia which gender is a slave state had nearly 700000 people at the 790 census and rhode island had 68000 roughly a free state connecticut next door had 3 and a half times that around 240000 so rhode island was thus given proportionally more power education noted them virginia. Slave holding. A. Slave Holding State and connecticut its next door neighbor was also not able to overpower it as much with 3 and a half times the population so the rural city every cultural industrial mountains plains all of those divisions all of those divisions bring in different interests and the Electoral College softens that softens those edges just a little bit keisha if theres a time in the Electoral College the house of representatives then decides the presidency but its not the representatives of the states that are voting correct and how much does that further complicate matters well that might be a better question for jennifer because you know ive been trying to figure out exactly what happened and thats something that you know entirely possible are you the you ask you this are you concerned that we could see a tie because were in a situation where even though joe biden leads the polling nationally by quite a margin its much tighter in those key swing states are you concerned about that i am concerned i mean i think this is you know in vermont where the home of howard dean and Bernie Sanders and a 50 state strategy and the idea that you dont only dough into swing states you know and talk to folks about what they. Theyre about in those areas you go to every state you listen to issues you dont rack up your delegate count and play out that strategy as much as actually hear whats on the minds of all americans and so you know moving away from but the Electoral College system it takes all in swing states would really help but hear about actual issues on americans my jennifer we only have about 90 seconds left let me ask you what i ask asia which is how much more complicated does it get if there is a tie and this goes to the house 1st of all let me just say its its extremely unlikely its never happened in u. S. History so i dont expect it to happen this year however essentially what happens even if you wind up with a tie in the Electoral College the house of representatives is asked to resolve that tie and the way that system works is that each state is given 11. 00 vote so the electors of the delegates are speaking the delegates from that state representatives from that state come together and try to offer a consensus choice from that state and he and i do that math i mean theres a lot of uncertainty there about exactly how that would go but it was all it would also be pretty close if it was donald trump and joe biden it would be pretty close its hard to say exactly which way that would go it looks like trying to might have an advantage on a state by state count overage or baie but again i think that scenario is pretty unlikely to her all right we have run out of times were going to have to leave it there thanks so much to all our guests Jennifer Victor and jim watch and thank you too for watching you can see the program again any time by visiting our website aljazeera dot com and for further discussion go to our Facebook Page thats facebook dot com forward slash a. J. Inside story you can also join the conversation on twitter our handle is at a. J. Inside story from emergency room in the whole team here bye for now. When i think of my life i think of potential when i think of what a shot i think what is being what is not i think of young people who need to do to get control to the island and do something that they come to coddle told me its impossible i think all the challenge. Here is my child in the country alex. My name is being duchess all and this is my mantra. My nigerian on aljazeera. Including to slay mine people have been killed too because we in the United States have privatized the ultimate Public Function more this was a deal with saudi arabia things were done differently saudis and other arabs from they came to britain to be all to help the past bombs deals although you will rumsfeld was meeting saddam isnt that interesting. Shadow on aljazeera. Here i am fully back to bill in doha with a look at our main stories on aljazeera nigerias biggest city is under 824 hour lockdown and millions of people are under curfew across the country the drastic will follows a chaotic turn in days of protests over Police Brutality Security Forces shot at crowds in lagos and there are reports that several people have been killed i mean dangerous reports. Just hours after curfew team into effect the Security Forces started moving. At the lucky toll gate in lagos several different witnesses record