Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College

by Jesse Wegman

According to multiple news reports at the time, the possibility was alarming enough to some inside the Bush campaign that there was discussion of a public relations blitz to convince electors to vote for the popular vote winner. It would include newspaper ads, public appeals to local business and community leaders and influential members of the clergy, as well as interviews with radio and TV personalities. The idea, according to an article in the New York Daily News, was to capitalize on the anticipated “popular uprising” against the Electoral College’s “essential unfairness.” The media would help fan the flames, an unnamed Bush aide was quoted as saying, “because the will of the people will have been thwarted.”17 The Electoral College and the popular vote did indeed split that year, but in the opposite direction—Gore won the popular vote by more than half a million votes, while Bush eked out a victory in the Electoral College.

December 24, 2020. Page 11.