Socraticgadfly's Reviews > Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?

Some spoiler alerts about the bare facts, but not about the "whys," which are covered in great depth in a well-researched book.

Lots of stuff I didn't know, like reforming the EC to require states to use the "district vote" system (think Maine and Nebraska) was first raised in the late 1790s and considered as possibly being added to the 12th Amendment, but when Republicans got massive Congressional majorities after the 1802 midtern elections, they weren't so enthusiastic.

It then had a second burst during the Era of Good Feelings, but as Jacksonians consolidated power, that too faded away. In the elbow throwing 1824 election, of the 24 states at that time, 12 were the “general ticket,” the more technical name for winner take all, 6 were district elections of some sort, and the other 6? Legislature-chosen (but then normally voting on the state lege’s winner-take-all desire.)

Other voting issues led off in the Emancipation world. Then, in the 1890s, populism led, briefly, anew, to district elections pushes. Not all gave the two “senatorial” votes to statewide winner; for example, Michigan created two half-state superdistricts.

Also, Texas' Tom DeLay led mid-decade redistricting? Michigan tried it in the 1890s, but Republicans couldn't agree among themselves as to what redistricting map they wanted. That’s a good sidebar of the book. More on that in a minute.

What’s missing? A popular vote push. That didn’t first arise until the 1970s. Before then, with Jim Crow, liberal northerners refused to surrender the power of their winner-take-all to Southern states disenfranchising Blacks. (And also refused to use the 14th Amendment’s Congressional reduction tool when having a Congressional majority.)

Keyssar also puts the lie to the idea that small states have been the ones to cling most to the Electoral College. Related? He shows how they’re not the biggest beneficiaries.

More than once in the past, some version of a constitutional amendment has passed one half of the Congress with the necessary 2/3 vote but fallen short in the other half.

As for the future? Republicans double down on winner take all and have made this an anti-democratic political position.

And, no, Trump’s threats and Shrub Bush’s actuality weren’t the first considered assault on the EC in modern times. Had either Hawaii, or especially, Ohio, been closer in 1976, Ford’s team had some plans sizzling on the back burner, Keyssar says.