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

by Jesse Wegman

What they had not anticipated was the degree to which the civil rights movement was changing the national conversation about race, power, and democracy in America. As the public became increasingly aware—and intolerant—of the massive imbalances in representation, the Court couldn’t continue to ignore the issue. The first step into the thicket came in 1961, when the Court agreed to hear a case called Baker v. Carr.8 Baker began with a lawsuit out of Tennessee, where state lawmakers had refused to redraw their legislative maps since the turn of the century, with a familiar outcome: in the more rural, eastern part of the state, one state lawmaker represented as few as 3,800 people; in the more urbanized western half, which included Nashville and Memphis, a single lawmaker represented as many as 70,000. In case anyone thought these numbers were the result of innocent, unbiased mapmaking, consider the words of James H. Cummings, a lawmaker from rural Cannon County and one of the more influential politicians in the state. Cummings told a reporter, “I believe in collecting the taxes where the money is—in the cities—and spending it where it’s needed—in the country.”9

December 26, 2020. Page 133.