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

by Jesse Wegman

The election of 1824 was the first to have a meaningful count of the national popular vote, because it was the first time a majority of eligible citizens could vote directly for presidential electors. About 360,000 voters turned out to cast a ballot that year, and they had a clear favorite: Andrew Jackson, a decorated army general from Tennessee, won about 150,000 votes, or a little more than 41 percent of the electorate. That put him well ahead of his nearest rival, John Quincy Adams, the secretary of state and son of the second president, who pulled in about 31 percent. Behind them were William Harris Crawford, the treasury secretary; and Henry Clay, the Speaker of the House. All four were Democratic-Republicans, since the Federalist Party had disintegrated in the early 1820s. In addition to his popular-vote lead, Jackson held a comfortable lead in the Electoral College, with 99 electoral votes to Adams’s 84. But the four-man race divided the electors widely enough to deprive any one candidate of the necessary majority. Under the provisions of the Twelfth Amendment, the House would choose among the top three finishers—Jackson, Adams, and Crawford. Clay, who finished fourth, was disqualified. Unlike the first time this happened, in 1800, the balloting didn’t drag on for days, but the final outcome was nearly as controversial. Adams won a majority of state votes on the first ballot, and he became the nation’s sixth president. Jackson, despite being a clear favorite in the ...

December 25, 2020. Page 101.