The Electoral College

Introduction

Brock Ervin holds a sign outside the Indiana House chamber in Indianapolis on Dec. 19, 2016, before the state's 11 Electoral College representatives gathered to formally cast their votes for President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence. Protesters wanted the Trump-Pence-pledged electors to vote for different candidates. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)

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Overview

On June 12, Oregon became the 16th jurisdiction to join what it hopes will be a revolution in the way America picks its presidents.

With Gov. Kate Brown's signature, Oregon became the newest member of a compact that is seeking to bypass the Electoral College, the 231-year-old system that has enabled two of the past three presidents to enter the White House after losing the popular vote.

Gov. Kate Brown earlier this year signed legislation making Oregon the 16th jurisdiction — 15 states plus the District of Columbia — to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. If enough states join, the compact would bypass the Electoral College. (Getty Images/CQ Roll Call/Tom WIlliams)

“This is about giving all voters in the United States, regardless of where they live, the ability to be heard in the most important of our elections,” Brown, a Democrat, said.

Under the compact — commonly called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact — members agree that their representatives to the 538-member Electoral College, called electors, will vote for the candidate who wins the plurality of the nationwide popular vote, regardless of how their state voted. The compact takes effect when enough states join to control 270 electoral votes, the number needed for a candidate to be elected president. Current compact members — 15 states, plus the District of Columbia — have 196 votes, 74 shy of the threshold needed.

Approved almost exclusively by Democratic lawmakers around the country, the compact picked up two Republican votes in the Oregon Senate but none in the House.1

“All of our elections except one treat every vote equally and guarantee the winner is the person with the most popular votes,” John Koza, the driving force behind the compact, wrote in USA Today. “Why shouldn't these principles also apply in a presidential election?”2

The compact is among several ongoing efforts to guarantee that the candidate who wins the most popular votes nationwide becomes president. Although both parties have tried to eliminate the Electoral College at various times in U.S. history, Democrats are leading the current move after Democratic candidates who won the popular vote lost two recent elections: In 2016 Republican Donald Trump won the presidency after losing the popular vote by nearly 3 million to Democrat Hillary Clinton, and in 2000, Republican George W. Bush became president after losing the popular vote by nearly 544,000 to Democrat Al Gore.

Defenders of the college — mostly conservatives and Republicans — say it is “at the core of our system of federalism,” as Gettysburg College history professor Allen Guelzo and Washington, D.C., lawyer James Hulme put it. Dismantling the Electoral College “would also mean dismantling federalism,” the system by which states share power with the federal government.3

Electoral College supporters argue that scrapping the institution would mean presidential campaigns would focus almost entirely on the biggest cities and states, giving the rest of the country scant attention. Small states need the college to ensure that “all of the country is represented, not just the population centers,” conservative commentator Mark Levin argued. “Why would a small state be part of the union if all it is is to be taxed to support the union? It wants a say, too.”4

An elector places her ballot for Donald Trump into a ballot box in the Pennsylvania Legislature in Harrisburg on Dec. 19, 2016. Two of the three most recent presidents, including Trump, have lost the national popular vote but won the office by securing a majority of Electoral College votes. (Getty Images/Mark Makela)

Supporters also warn that a nationwide recount, should it be necessary, could create a national nightmare. Pointing to the chaotic Florida recount in 2000, Reed College political scientist Paul Gronke challenged critics of the college to “imagine if that was done across the country. It's just not clear how you could do that.”5 (See Short Feature.)

Critics of the Electoral College say states know how to conduct recounts and point out that candidates currently concentrate on a handful of swing states and ignore most of the country while campaigning.

Advocates for the compact say the run-up to the 2020 election has focused new attention on their campaign, although most acknowledge that next year's contest will be played out under existing rules. Immediately after the last presidential election, visits to the National Popular Vote Inc. website soared from 1,000 page views a week to 2 million, said Patrick Rosenstiel, a senior consultant to the group.6

“Interest in the [compact] has just skyrocketed since the 2016 election,” says Koza, founder and chairman of the organization, which campaigns for the compact. “We used to go to hearings, and there would be one or two people” in the audience, he says. “Now, 80, 100, 120 people show up, and public meetings on this issue draw a lot of people.”

While Democrats are the ones currently pushing for change, over the years people of all political stripes have wanted to scrap the college. Polling shows most Americans agree with the view expressed by Arizona Republic columnist E.J. Montini, who wrote after the 2016 vote: “The candidate who gets the most votes should not lose. It's just that simple.”7

Support for the popular vote peaked at 80 percent in 1968, according to a Gallup Poll. Republican support for the popular vote has fallen since Bush's election in 2000, and Trump's victory all but ended bipartisanship on the issue: In April, Gallup found that while 55 percent of all Americans support electing presidents by popular vote, 74 percent of Republicans opposed the switch while 84 percent of Democrats supported it.8

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The Electoral College exists because the framers of the Constitution did not trust rank-and-file voters to choose the best candidate. So they assigned that task to electors, chosen by the states, according to each state's individual rules.

Currently, when voters cast ballots for the president and vice president, they are not voting directly for the candidates. Their votes instead determine which slate of electors, chosen before the election by each state's political party leaders and any independent candidates on the ballot, will ultimately pick the president and vice president. Those slates officially become electors when the presidential ticket they support wins the most popular votes in their state. Some states require electors to keep their pledges when voting, but that policy is being challenged in lawsuits that might reach the Supreme Court. Electors cast their official votes for president and vice president at their state houses in December after the November election.

In 48 states, candidates generally vote for the candidate that wins a plurality in their state, regardless of how individual regions in the state voted — a rule known as the winner-take-all approach. In Maine and Nebraska, two at-large electors are chosen to vote according to the state's popular vote, while the others vote according to the plurality in their congressional districts.9

States have as many electors as they have U.S. representatives and senators. Because each state — regardless of population — has two senators, small states end up having a greater influence in the Electoral College than their population size would allot. The combination of the small states' enhanced power and the winner-take-all allocation of electors creates the possibility of a national popular vote winner losing in the Electoral College, which has happened five times in the nation's history — with Democrats losing each time.10

That happens if one candidate racks up a large popular-vote lead in populous states while the other candidate carries states with more electors but by narrower vote margins. In 2016, for instance, Clinton won California by 4 million votes and collected 55 electors there. Trump won 57 electors by winning by a margin of 171,328 votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona.

Small states' power also is enhanced by Congress' decision in 1929 to cap the size of the U.S. House of Representatives at 435 members. Because each state must have at least one representative, as state populations have grown the disproportionate power of small states' voters has increased. In mid-2018, for example, California's population of 39.6 million was 68.5 times larger than Wyoming's 577,737 residents. As a result, each of California's 55 presidential electors represented 719,219 residents while Wyoming's three electors represented only 192,579 each. If each elector represented the same number of residents, California would have 15 more.11

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Current demographic trends likely will exacerbate this issue as more Americans move into urban and suburban areas, which often are dominated by Democrats. “By 2040, 50 percent of Americans will live in eight states, and 70 percent in 15 states,” says Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute and self-described moderate Democrat. “That means, 30 percent of Americans will select 70 percent of the senators.”

Such demographic shifts will make “misfire” presidential elections more likely, says Robert Alexander, chair of Ohio Northern University's Department of History, Political Science and Geography and author of two books about the Electoral College. If Trump, whose approval ratings have remained below 45 percent during his first term, is re-elected next year, it will likely be after losing the popular vote again, Alexander says.

Supporters of the National Popular Vote Compact say it could solve the problem of disparate influence of small states in the Electoral College without having to go through the difficult task of amending the Constitution, which requires either:

• An amendment adopted by two-thirds of each congressional chamber and legislatures in three-quarters of the states.

• Two-thirds of the states calling for a constitutional convention, which can propose amendments that would have to be ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures.

Democrats have introduced amendments in both the U.S. House and Senate to abandon the college, but the measures appear to have little chance of being adopted because of opposition from Republicans and small and swing states.

Critics of the Electoral College system also are pursuing other paths to a popular vote, such as:

• Urging states to award their electoral votes by congressional district, or proportionally, according to candidates' shares of the statewide popular vote, instead of by the winner-take-all rule.

• Expanding the U.S. House of Representatives to make its membership — and that of the Electoral College — more closely match the populations of the states.

• Challenging the winner-take-all provisions in court, claiming they violate the Constitution's promise of one person, one vote.

As supporters and critics of the Electoral College watch the 2020 campaign unfold, here are some questions they are debating:

Should the Electoral College be abolished?

Before the 2016 election, Trump and Clinton agreed on one important matter: The Electoral College was a terrible institution that should give way to the popular vote.

In 2000, after Gore won the popular vote but lost in the Electoral College to Bush, Clinton said “we should respect the will of the people” with “the popular election of our president.” And during the 2012 presidential campaign — when some analysts warned that Republican Mitt Romney might win the popular vote but lose the electoral vote — Trump called the Electoral College a “disgusting injustice,” “a total sham and a travesty” and “a disaster for a democracy.”

In 2016, however, after losing the popular vote but winning in the Electoral College, Trump said: “The Electoral College is actually genius in that it brings all states, including the smaller ones, into play.”12

Trump's reversal echoes some of the current arguments about whether the college should be shut down. The institution's critics say it perverts democracy when it awards the White House to a popular-vote loser, who then has trouble governing because many question the president's legitimacy. Electoral College supporters describe it as an integral part of a federal system that binds the disparate states together and prevents the majority from running roughshod over the rights of the minority.

Republican candidate Donald Trump campaigns at the Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space Museum in Denver in July 2016. Critics of the Electoral College contend that it forces candidates to campaign heavily in battleground states such as Colorado, ignoring the others. Colorado went to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. (AFP/Getty Images/Jason Connolly)

The framers did not seek “a pure majoritarian vote,” but rather “a president who would get a wide amount of support from across the country, from Americans of very different backgrounds and interests, including representation of the small and large states,” says Jarrett Stepman, a contributor to the Daily Signal, published by the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington. “Yes, it favors small states, but the big states still dominate within that system” because they have more popular and electoral votes.

Besides, he adds, “all small states don't vote Republican and all the big states don't vote blue.” Texas, for example, tends to support the GOP while Delaware tends to vote Democratic.

University of California, Berkeley, law professor John Yoo and California lawyer James Phillips cited other constitutional provisions that do not honor majority rule, such as “judicial review, which isn't responsive to popular will, [and] the Senate, where states have equal representation regardless of size.”13 Others note the Constitution's guarantee of minority rights that cannot be overturned by the majority, such as those enumerated in the Bill of Rights.

If the popular vote ruled, Yoo said, “candidates would ignore the states and campaign solely in the population centers that Clinton easily won [in 2016], such as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.”14

Judith Best, a political scientist at the State University of New York at Cortland, praised the Electoral College's “magnifier” effect. Since the winner's share of the electoral vote tends to exceed his or her share of the popular vote, the incoming president appears to have a stronger mandate for governing, she said.15 Republican Ronald Reagan won a bare majority of the popular vote in 1980 yet collected more than 90 percent of the electoral vote, for example.

Ohio Northern University's Alexander, however, argues that losing the popular vote challenges a president's legitimacy and makes him less effective. For example, in a recent survey of members of the American Political Science Association, all five presidents who won in the Electoral College after losing the popular vote were in the bottom half of presidential rankings of “greatness.”16

Electoral College supporters also warn of postelection chaos if popular votes need to be recounted nationwide. Recounting just some of Florida's votes in 2000 was a “belabored, emotional, costly process,” said Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Heritage Foundation's Election Law Reform Initiative, which advocates conservative election policies.17

Critics of the Electoral College dismiss supporters' arguments as overdrawn and sometimes incorrect.

“I find it kind of funny when I see citizens of North Dakota vigorously defending the Electoral College because it gives small states greater influence,” says the American Enterprise Institute's Ornstein. In fact, candidates focus on a handful of politically divided “battleground” states, he adds, so “nobody is going to pay any attention to North Dakota in the general election.”

In fact, said Robert Speel, an associate professor of political science at Penn State University's Erie campus, during the 2016 general election the major parties presidential and vice presidential nominees held 94 percent of their campaign events in 12 states and 57 percent in four battleground states: Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Ohio.18

In addition, says the National Popular Vote's Koza, the way presidential candidates campaign in battleground states shows they do not ignore rural areas when seeking popular votes. In Ohio, for example, rural counties “got 25 percent of the [candidate] visits in 2012,” even though only 22 percent of state's residents live in those counties.

The contention that candidates would spend all their time in large coastal cities also is wrong, wrote Washington Post columnist Philip Bump. “Midwestern [and Southern] states also have some big cities that would be appealing to candidates,” he noted.19 Texas, for example, has five of the nation's 15 most-populous cities, and others are in Ohio, Illinois, Arizona and Florida.20

Recounts would not pose an insurmountable challenge because “states do them all the time,” says George Edwards III, a political science professor at Texas A&M University and author of Why the Electoral College Is Bad for America. In fact, he says, recounts are more likely with the Electoral College because the outcome can come down to a close contest in one state.

Should states stop casting all their electoral votes for one candidate?

Many critics of the Electoral College say the winner-take-all rule used in 48 states and the District of Columbia is its biggest problem. When a state allocates all its electoral votes to one candidate, it negates the opinions of voters who supported other candidates and is a major reason popular-vote losers can become president, the critics say. It also depresses turnout by discouraging Republicans from voting in Democratic-dominated states, and vice versa, they say.

But there are also weaknesses in several of the reforms proposed to solve this problem, experts say.

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Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig, who has initiated lawsuits against states with winner-take-all policies, describes the practice as “counting the votes of the minority for the purpose of discarding them.” That, he says, violates the constitutional requirement that all votes have equal value.

A Texas lawsuit also argues that winner-take-all “perpetuates racial discrimination in voting and the dilution of minority voting power.” Many African Americans and Hispanics in that state supported Clinton but their votes were ignored, the plaintiffs contend.21

Lessig and his organization, Equal Citizens, prefer electing the president by national popular vote, but say that proportional selection of electors is better than winner-take-all policies, because it more closely mirrors the popular vote. Under proportional selection proposals, electors would be allocated according to candidates' shares of the statewide popular vote, instead of by the winner-take-all rule.

Reed Hundt, co-founder and chairman of Making Every Vote Count, which prefers going to a popular vote system, says proportional selection would be an improvement over the current system because “it would cause the campaigns to compete everywhere, which I think is the main problem to solve.”

However, he warns, proportional selection would increase the likelihood that the House of Representatives would end up choosing the president, because it would make it easier for minor-party candidates to win electors, perhaps enough to deny a majority of the electoral votes to any contender. “If you did proportionality in 2016,” Hundt says, “neither Trump nor Clinton gets to 270.”

Ohio Northern University's Alexander says proportional selection could cause campaigning to move “from battleground states to battleground congressional districts.” The National Popular Vote's Koza agrees: “Instead of having 12 battleground states and five or six being two-thirds of the campaign, you'd have 40 to 55 competitive congressional districts.” That still falls far short of the benefits of having the president elected by national popular vote, he says.

Republicans have introduced measures in two states that would apportion votes according to the winning candidate in each congressional district and allocate two electors to vote for the winner of the statewide popular vote. Those bills are pending in Virginia and Illinois, which in 2016 awarded all of their electoral votes to Clinton. A Democrat is sponsoring similar legislation in Florida, which gave all its electoral votes to Trump.

All electors should not be picked at-large because states have various regional interests, said State Rep. Tim Butler, sponsor of the Illinois legislation. Virginia Delegate Mark Cole echoed those sentiments when introducing a similar bill, saying that urban- and Democratic-dominated Northern Virginia casts such a large portion of that state's votes that rural Virginians feel they do not matter. Maine and Nebraska currently use a proportional system.

Others warn that proportional allocation of electors would increase incentives for gerrymandering, or drawing legislative district boundaries to benefit the party in power — skewing presidential-election results.

Congressional pages carry chests containing Electoral College votes during a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2017, the day President Trump was officially declared the winner of the 2016 election. (Getty Images/Anadolu Agency/Samuel Corum)

For instance, through gerrymandering a party can win a majority of the state's congressional delegation even if its candidates collectively win a minority of the statewide vote. In 2012, if electors had been assigned by congressional district, gerrymandering would have enabled Republican nominee Romney to defeat Barack Obama despite losing by 5 million popular votes, according to a FairVote report.22 And Trump still would have won in 2016 if electors were chosen by congressional district, according to Making Every Vote Count.23

Management professors Arnold Barnett of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Edward Kaplan of Yale proposed allocating fractions of electoral votes to link the Electoral College even more closely to the popular vote. For instance, in Connecticut — where Clinton won all seven electoral votes with 54.6 percent of the popular vote in 2016 — a fractional system would have given her 3.82 electoral votes and Trump 2.86, with the remaining 0.32 divided among the other candidates, Barnett and Kaplan wrote. Under that system, Bush would still have won the 2000 election, but Clinton would have won in 2016, they found.24

But some experts question the constitutionality of casting “fractions” of votes. “It is electors — and not mathematical abstractions — doing the voting in the Electoral College,” Allen Guelzo and James Hulme wrote.25

Should electors vote for the winner of the nationwide popular vote?

Supporters of choosing the president by popular vote view the proposed National Popular Vote Interstate Compact as a clever way to evade the Herculean task of amending the Constitution. Opponents say the plan is unconstitutional.

“The national popular vote compact is probably the best option we have right now” to overcome the anti-democratic effects of the Electoral College, says the American Enterprise Institute's Ornstein. Hundt, from Making Every Vote Count, calls the compact “the one [plan] that is practical.”

The Constitution allows states to join interstate compacts with congressional approval. Acknowledging the number of compacts that exist — many covering technical matters of importance to only the states involved — the Supreme Court has ruled that consent is required only if a compact threatens federal or state sovereignty.

“If ever a compact encroached on federal and state sovereignty, this is it,” said Tara Ross, a retired lawyer in Dallas and author of Enlightened Democracy: The Case for the Electoral College. If the compact goes into effect, “its proponents will have effectively changed the presidential election procedure described in the Constitution, without the bother of obtaining a constitutional amendment.”26

Political scientists Darin DeWitt of California State University, Long Beach, and Thomas Schwartz of UCLA also question the constitutionality of the plan's provisions and warn of the “mischief” it would create. “Its champions brag that the compact requires no constitutional amendment, but for that very reason it would give us a political system wanting in durability and predictability,” they wrote in the journal PS: Political Science & Politics.

That is because, just as states can join the compact voluntarily, they also can withdraw, DeWitt and Schwartz argued. If the compact takes effect with just slightly more than the 270 electors needed to choose the president, one withdrawal could break it, they said. And while the compact would limit when withdrawals could occur, a withdrawal would not trigger a penalty, so it could not be prevented, they said.27 State officials might do that if it would benefit their preferred candidate, critics of the compact say.

William Ross, a law professor at Samford University in Birmingham, Ala., questioned whether a Republican- or Democratic-controlled state legislature would allow its electoral votes to put a member of the other party in the White House. The compact would violate the federalist system in which the framers created a state-by-state method for choosing the president, he added.28

Some critics argue the compact would violate the 1965 Voting Rights Act — which bans denying or abridging the right to vote — because using the national popular vote would reduce the influence that black and Hispanic voters exercise in some large states.29 Others question the legitimacy of a national vote conducted under 51 different sets of election rules.

Jurisdictions have different rules regarding voting hours, early voting, ballot design, voter ID, recount procedures and voter eligibility, Tara Ross pointed out.30 Some states bar felons from voting, while others allow felons to vote when in prison, said Derek Muller, an associate professor at the Pepperdine University law school. Residency requirements also differ by state, as do rules about mail-in ballots and how candidates qualify for the ballot.31

All of these matters can affect who votes and the size of the turnout, critics say.

Because the proposed compact does not require the winner to gather a majority of the nationwide vote, it could produce presidents who received only a plurality of the votes, especially if more than two serious candidates emerge. Thus, a president could be elected who still is opposed by a significant majority of the country, Schwartz says, as occurred in 2016.

Koza and the National Popular Vote dispute these criticisms.

The compact does not need federal approval because the Constitution authorizes each state to decide how to choose its electors, Koza says. And a state cannot leave the compact between July 20 during a presidential election year and inauguration day, he says. Courts have ruled that compacts can control how members leave the compact and that such rules are enforceable in court, he adds, and federal law prevents states from changing how they pick electors after Election Day.

Rakeda Leaks, right, and Candice Williams fill out Electoral College maps at an election night party in New York City on Nov. 4, 2008, when Barack Obama was elected the 44th president. The Electoral College gives states with smaller populations more of a voice in presidential elections. (Getty Images/Bloomberg/JB Reed)

The popular vote compact also would not deny or abridge anyone's right to vote, in accordance with the Voting Rights Act, according to the National Popular Vote. “On the contrary, it would make every person's vote for president equal,” consistent with a main goal of the act, the group said. In 2012, the Justice Department determined that the compact did not violate the act, Koza says.

The organization contends that the nation's system of federalism — in which the state and federal governments hold distinct powers — legitimizes conducting a national vote with different election systems. “Differences in election laws are inherent in our federalist system, which gives the states control over elections,” the organization said.

The compact is not unique in allowing a president to be elected with less than a majority of the popular vote, the organization noted. Fourteen presidents have won less than half of the popular vote, and two of the last three took office after finishing second. No candidate received a majority in 49 states in 1992 when Democrat Bill Clinton defeated Republican incumbent George H.W. Bush and independent Ross Perot with 43 percent of the national vote, the organization said.32

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Background

Electoral College Compromise

In August 1787, during the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, delegates appointed a Committee of Eleven on Postponed Matters to resolve unfinished business, including — at a time when national identity was weak — how to pick the president.

Delegates had considered giving that task to Congress, the governors, the state legislatures or the people. But no proposal attracted widespread support. The framers did not want to make the president subservient to Congress, and they did not trust ordinary Americans to make the decision even though voting was restricted at the time to white, male property owners in most places.33

Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania — the author of the preamble to the Constitution and one of the few supporters of the popular vote — argued that “if the people should elect, they will never fail to prefer some man of distinguished character, or services. If the Legislature elect, it will be the work of intrigue, of cabal, and of faction.”34

But most delegates agreed with John Adams, who warned against the “stupidity” of the “numerous multitude.” James Madison, later called “the Father of the Constitution,” said democracies are “incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”35

Southern states also opposed electing the president based on a nationwide popular vote because slaves were not citizens and could not vote. Southerners feared that the Northern states, with their larger free populations who could vote, would dominate presidential elections.

The committee finally produced a compromise — outlined in Article II, Section 1, Clause 3 of the Constitution — which became the Electoral College system still in use. It said electors would choose the president, with each state having the same number of electors as the size of its congressional delegation of senators and representatives. To mollify small states, delegates had previously agreed to a compromise in which each state would get two senators. Delegates also had agreed to count each slave as three-fifths of a person when allocating U.S. representatives based on population.

Without counting slaves, Madison had warned, no Southern candidate could win the presidency, because Southern states would not have enough electoral votes.36 In the wake of the compromise, Southerners won eight of the first nine presidential elections.

Originally, each elector could cast two votes, without differentiating between president and vice president. The candidate winning the most votes — as long as the total equaled a majority — became president. The candidate with the second-most votes became vice president. If no one won a majority or the candidates tied for the majority, the House would select the president. If candidates tied for the second-most votes, the Senate would select the vice president.37

The framers did not approach picking the president with “lofty ideals about what representation ought to look like,” says Ohio Northern University's Alexander. The Electoral College “only came about late in the process, after a great deal of compromise. It was what they could accomplish given the different demands that the people in the states wanted,” and “maybe shouldn't be held as sacrosanct as we often think.”

The first four presidential elections were conducted under those rules. But the 1800 contest spurred Congress to amend the process. Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, running as Democratic-Republican candidates, each received 73 electoral votes, defeating Federalist Party candidates John Adams and Charles Pinckney. The Jefferson-Burr tie ended only after the 36th ballot in the House, when some Federalist Party representatives conceded their loss and voted for Jefferson.38

To prevent a recurrence, Congress approved the 12th Amendment to the Constitution in 1803. It required electors to cast separate votes — one for president and one for vice president. The states quickly ratified it before the 1804 election.39

Although more than 700 amendments have been proposed to abolish or change the Electoral College, only one other has been ratified, and its primary purpose was not to affect presidential elections. After the Civil War and the end of slavery, the 14th Amendment repealed the three-fifths rule in apportioning House seats.40

State Rules

Through the years, states have amended how they select electors and how those electors should cast their votes.

For instance, the states fairly quickly abandoned the framers' vision of electors as independent actors who would take public opinion into account but use their own judgment when voting. Instead, parties nominated candidates for elector who were expected to support the parties' candidates for president and vice president. By 1832, in every state except South Carolina, the popular vote for president in that state determined which slate of nominees became the state's official electors.41

The winner-take-all rule grew in popularity over time. In the first presidential election in 1789, only three states enforced the rule. Virginia adopted it after the 1796 election, when favorite son Jefferson lost one of his state's electoral votes to Adams.42 By 1836, all states had adopted the winner-take-all rule, although Michigan abandoned it for one election in 1892, and Maine and Nebraska now select some electors in congressional districts and some at large.43

What many today view as the Electoral College's major flaw — the possibility that the popular-vote loser can become president — first became evident in 1824. That year, John Quincy Adams became president after losing the popular vote to Andrew Jackson. The electors split their votes among four candidates, none of whom received the majority, and the House chose Adams, enraging Jackson and his supporters.44

After the Civil War, the federal government stationed troops in the South to oversee the defeated Confederate states and enforce the civil rights of newly freed slaves. During this 12-year period, known as Reconstruction, African Americans supplied the vast majority of Republican votes in the South and won election to 2,000 government offices. Although the number of officeholders fell short of blacks' share of the Southern population, their participation still angered the many whites who longed for the days of slavery and white supremacy.45

In that political environment in 1876, Democrat Samuel Tilden of New York became the second candidate to win the popular vote but lose the presidency, to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio.

Southern whites had blocked many African Americans from voting. The Republican Party — which controlled election procedures in Florida, South Carolina and Louisiana — refused to count many Democratic ballots there.

Tilden appeared to win 51 percent of the popular vote, but disputes over results in Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina left the electoral vote in question. Congress appointed a commission — composed of representatives, senators and Supreme Court justices — to resolve the matter. The result was a compromise in which Democrats agreed to give Hayes the presidency if Republicans agreed to the withdrawal of federal troops from the former Confederacy.

After that, Southern Democrats began to disenfranchise blacks by imposing such barriers as poll taxes and literacy tests, and resumed white rule under an apartheid-like system known as Jim Crow which lasted nearly a century.46

In 1888, Democratic incumbent Grover Cleveland won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote — 233 to 168 — to Republican Benjamin Harrison.47 It would be more than a century before the next popular-vote loser would win the presidency through the Electoral College — George W. Bush in 2000 followed by Trump in 2016.

The 1960 election produced a close call. Democrat John F. Kennedy defeated Republican Richard M. Nixon by just two-tenths of a percentage point of the popular vote. Republican elector Henry Irwin of Oklahoma tried to recruit Republican and conservative-Democrat electors to abandon Nixon and Kennedy and to elect conservative Harry Byrd, a Democratic U.S. senator from Virginia. Irwin and 14 unpledged electors from Alabama and Mississippi voted for Byrd, but Kennedy won with 303 electoral votes, 33 more than needed.48

Push for Popular Vote

Over the years, several attempts to move toward a popular vote have made some headway, with coalitions supporting or opposing it changing as the political tides shifted.

In 1950, the Senate approved a constitutional amendment to allocate electors according to the candidates' proportion of the popular vote in each state. The proposal died in the House, where liberal Democrats feared it would weaken the clout of big cities in winner-take-all states.49

In 1966, Democratic Sen. Birch Bayh of Indiana began a campaign for the popular vote. Noting that in the nation's early days only white men with property could vote in most places and senators were chosen by state legislatures until 1913, he called his proposal the “logical, realistic and proper continuation of … a tradition of continuous expansion of the franchise and equality in voting.”

Eventually, he pointed out, the franchise was extended nationwide to men and women of any race or ethnicity, and voters were allowed to choose their senators. In addition, among other advances, the Supreme Court established the one-person, one-vote principle in the 1964 Reynolds v. Sims case, ruling that the Constitution's equal protection clause requires a state's legislative districts to have substantially the same population.

Bayh's effort received a major boost in 1968, when people feared the presidential election could be thrown into Congress because of the presence of a strong third-party candidate, former Alabama Gov. George Wallace. On Election Day, Republican Richard M. Nixon managed to win an Electoral College majority even though Wallace, a segregationist, won 13.5 percent of the popular vote, carried five states and received 46 electoral votes.50

A Gallup Poll after the election found that 80 percent of the public supported shifting to the popular vote, and Nixon and Democratic candidate Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey both agreed. “I believe the events of 1968 constitute the clearest proof that priority must be accorded to Electoral College reform,” Nixon said. Humphrey argued that “direct election of the president would give each American citizen an equal vote — a fundamental principle of our democratic process.”51 Organizations ranging from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Bar Association to the League of Women Voters also endorsed Bayh's plan.

A year later the House voted 338-70 to establish a popular-vote system that would require a runoff if no candidate received more than 40 percent of the votes. It was filibustered to death in the Senate, however, where segregationist senators feared the measure would reduce Southern whites' influence. Although the Voting Rights Act had passed in 1965, millions of African Americans remained disenfranchised across the South.52

In 1977, Democratic President Jimmy Carter proposed a popular-vote amendment as part of an election-reform package that included such measures as easing voter registration procedures and providing federal funding to congressional campaigns. After initially receiving bipartisan support, the measure was rejected by the Senate two years later, after liberal Northern senators opposed it on the grounds that it would weaken the influence of blacks and Jews in some populous states.53

The measure never got to the House floor.54

Modern Proposals

The 2000 and 2016 elections revived interest in switching to the popular vote.

In 2000, George W. Bush became president with 271 electoral votes, just one more than the required majority, despite losing the popular vote to Gore by nearly 544,000 votes. The decision came down to Florida, where recounts and court cases delayed the final results until Dec. 12, when the Supreme Court ordered the counting halted. The result was a 537-vote Bush victory in Florida — out of more than 105 million cast nationwide — giving him the state's 25 electoral votes.55 (See Short Feature.)

Circuit Court Judge Robert Rosenberg carefully examines a punch-card ballot in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., during the 2000 vote recount that gave Republican George W. Bush Florida's 25 electoral votes. The early end to the Florida recount secured Bush's victory over Democratic contender Al Gore in the presidential election. (Getty Images/Newsmakers/Robert King)

Hillary Clinton's popular-vote margin in 2016 — nearly 3 million — was more than five times Gore's, yet she lost the Electoral College by 77 votes. In that election there were three key states rather than one — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Each had voted for the Democratic candidate in all presidential elections since 1992. But they went for Trump by margins ranging from 0.7 percent in Pennsylvania to 0.3 percent in Michigan. Had their 46 electoral votes gone to Clinton, she would have won.56

The narrow margin and Trump's incendiary campaign conduct led Democratic activists — and some so-called Never-Trump Republicans — to try to persuade electors not to vote for the GOP nominee.

“The Electoral College was designed to prevent a demagogue from becoming president,” said Charlottesville, Va., then-Mayor Michael Signer, a historian who wrote a book about Madison. “The candidacy of Donald Trump provides [electors] with every reason to perform their job.”57

Activists circulated the names, email addresses, phone numbers and sometimes even home addresses of Trump-pledged electors, and several Hollywood celebrities made a video urging electors to oppose Trump. A coalition of anti-Trump groups financed a $500,000 advertising purchase. One group called themselves “Hamilton Electors” after the framer who said electors should be independent actors.58

Daniel Brezenoff, a clinical social worker and human services professor in California, started the Change.org petition drive urging electors to oppose Trump, which attracted nearly 5 million online signatures.59

Kirk Shook, a Trump-pledged elector in Georgia, said he received more than 72,300 messages.60 Carole Joyce, an elector from Arizona, said the thousands of letters, emails and phone calls she received “had an impact. But I signed a loyalty pledge. And that matters.”61

The effort culminated with protests at some state capitols where the electors gathered to vote on Dec. 19. Seven deserted the candidate they were elected to support: five refused to vote for Clinton and two refused to vote for Trump.62

Political analysts considered the effort doomed from the start. The activists weren't attempting to elect Clinton but simply to deny the presidency to Trump. Even if they had deprived Trump of the Electoral College majority, the decision would have gone to the GOP-majority House, which presumably would have supported Trump.63

After the popular voting, outgoing Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer of California introduced a constitutional amendment to replace the Electoral College, calling it “an outdated, undemocratic system that does not reflect our modern society.”64

The amendment died, but activists reported increased interest in their long-term efforts to change the system.

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Current Situation

State Actions

Although in recent years, the interstate compact for the popular vote has expanded slowly but methodically, “getting about one state a year” to sign up, support for the campaign has suddenly grown, says the group's founder and chairman Koza. “This year we got four states,” he says. Those included Oregon, Colorado, New Mexico and Delaware.65

But 2019 has not produced all good news for the compact. Maine's Senate had voted to join the compact in May and the House followed suit in June but then reversed itself when 20 Democrats joined minority Republicans who argued the change would be bad for small states.66

Nevada's Legislature voted in May to join, with all Democratic senators and most Democratic House members supporting the legislation. However, Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak vetoed the measure, saying that it “could diminish the role of smaller states like Nevada in national electoral contests.”67

Despite its small population — 33rd among the 50 states — closely contested Nevada was among the eight states that together hosted 96 percent of general election events during the 2012 presidential campaign and among 12 that hosted 94 percent of such events in 2016.68 Politico classified Nevada as one of 11 battleground states in 2016, when Clinton won it by 2.4 percentage points.69 And Guy Cecil, chairman of the liberal super PAC Priorities USA, has called Nevada one of six “core” battleground states for 2020.70

Including Maine and Nevada, the compact has been approved in at least one chamber in eight states with a total of 75 electoral votes. The others are Arkansas, Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina and Oklahoma. If approved by both chambers and signed by the governors, the pact would have one more than the 270 electors needed to elect the president.71 (See Map.)

While most legislative support has come from Democrats, Koza notes that Republican-majority chambers in Oklahoma and Arizona backed the compact, as did GOP-majority committees in Georgia and Missouri.

“The support rises and falls because of the enthusiasm, in many cases, of one state legislator who decides to really make it their project,” Koza says. “That's what gets this moving in a lot of states.

Legal Actions

Four lawsuits seeking to ban winner-take-all allocation of electors are awaiting action in federal appeals courts.

Equal Citizens, an election-reform organization, has sued two Republican-dominated states (Texas and South Carolina) and two Democratic-dominated states (Massachusetts and California) to demonstrate that the current system harms both political parties.

But federal District Court judges in Boston, Charleston, S.C., San Antonio and Los Angeles dismissed the suits on the grounds that the practice does not violate the constitutional requirement of one-person, one-vote, or the Voting Rights Act's prohibition of racial discrimination in elections. The plaintiffs have appealed to the First, Fourth, Fifth and Ninth Circuit courts.

Equal Citizens also is pressing suits in support of so-called “faithless electors” in Colorado and Washington state. Both states' laws require electors to support the candidate who wins each state's popular vote. Three electors filed the Washington suit because they said they were fined for voting for former Secretary of State Colin Powell after being elected as pledged to Clinton. The three plaintiffs in Colorado also were pledged to Clinton. One had his vote overturned after he cast it for former Ohio Gov. John Kasich. The other two said they were unconstitutionally pressured to vote for Clinton, which they did.

Judge Wiley Daniel of Colorado's U.S. District Court dismissed the Colorado suit, ruling that the state's elector law “codifies the historical understanding and long-standing practice of binding electors to the people's vote.”72 But on Aug. 20, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Daniel's decision, ruling that members of the Electoral College could choose whomever they wanted, regardless of a state's popular vote winner.

“The text of the Constitution makes clear that states do not have the constitutional authority to interfere with presidential electors who exercise their constitutional right to vote for the President and Vice President candidates of their choice,” the court said.73 Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said she is mulling her options for appeal.

In Denver, Gloria McVeigh urges presidential electors to vote their conscience on the evening before they cast their votes at their state capitols in December 2016. Four lawsuits are before the courts to determine if electors are legally mandated to vote for the candidates they pledged to support. (AFP/Getty Images/Chris Schneider)

In Washington, the state Supreme Court in May upheld a lower court ruling against the plaintiffs, saying that the Constitution “explicitly confers broad authority on the states to dictate the manner and mode of appointing presidential electors.” That authority includes requiring electors to vote as they pledged, the court said.74

The Washington Legislature then passed a bill authorizing a political party to replace faithless electors with alternates who will vote for the party's candidate.75 Equal Citizens founder Lessig predicts both the Washington and Colorado cases will end up in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Equal Citizens' support for the faithless electors is part of its campaign for the national popular vote or proportional allocation of electors. Lessig says the Constitution clearly allows electors to vote as they choose, but he says faithless electors could create a constitutional crisis in a close election.

When Bush won the 2000 election with 271 electoral votes — one more than was needed — a Gore-pledged elector from Washington, D.C., withheld her vote to protest the district's lack of voting representation in Congress. If two Bush electors had defected, the House would have picked the president, Lessig notes.

“We got involved in the faithless elector case simply because the court needs to resolve this question [about electors' freedom] before it creates a constitutional crisis,” he says. Lessig says that although the U.S. Supreme Court upheld states' rights to require electors to sign a pledge, the justices “expressly reserved the question [of] whether the state could make the pledge enforceable.”

Moreover, he adds, “I'm quite convinced this court will hold electors are free to vote their conscience.” Then, when federal and state legislators realize electors cannot be bound to the will of the voters, the lawmakers might be willing to amend the Constitution, he says. “And that will create a moment where America has a 40-percent chance to fix the Electoral College.”

Amending the Constitution

Legislation introduced by Democrats in both congressional chambers this year would start the amendment process to abolish the Electoral College in favor of the national popular vote.

“More than a century ago, we amended our Constitution to provide for the direct election of U.S. senators,” Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee said as he introduced his House version of the measure. “It is past time to directly elect our president and vice president.”76

Introducing his Senate version, Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley said, “The idea of democracy is simple and obvious even to young kids on a playground — whoever gets the most votes should win.”77 Hawaii Democrat Brian Schatz introduced a similar Senate bill.78

Merkley's proposal would allow Congress to decide whether the winner would have to receive a majority. The other bills require just a plurality.

However, without the kind of bombshell Lessig predicts from the Supreme Court, prospects for amending the Constitution are dim. Such a measure must receive two-thirds support in both the House and Senate and be ratified by three-quarters of the states.

A constitutional amendment also could be proposed at a constitutional convention requested by two-thirds (34) of the states. The proposed amendment then would have to be ratified by three-fourths of the states. That method has never been used.

An effort is underway to convene a constitutional convention for a different purpose. It is led by former Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker, the national honorary chairman of the Center for State-led National Debt Solutions, which is advocating a constitutional mandate that the federal budget be balanced. So far, the organization has the support of 28 legislatures.

Many people — especially on the left — oppose the idea of calling a convention. They fear it could turn into a free-for-all and do profound damage to the nation's system of government.79

Beyond the stated purpose of the convention, “there will be other people who want to cap federal taxing and spending at a level that makes Social Security and Medicare impossible,” said David Super, a Georgetown University law professor. And the convention would be swarmed by “big-money interests like we've never seen,” he said. “All the drilling and mining people who want to open our national parks for mineral exploitation — they'll put in some amendments on that. And the super-rich will want to prohibit a progressive income tax.”80

Texas A&M's Edwards says, “I'm scared to death of it. I don't think you can limit a constitutional convention.”

The American Enterprise Institute's Ornstein says: “You think of a constitutional convention that was dominated by the likes of Ben Franklin and James Madison, and I fear the likes of [Fox News host] Shawn Hannity and [left-wing filmmaker] Michael Moore.”

Lessig argues that such concerns are unfounded, pointing out that three-fourths of the states would have to approve any amendments proposed by a convention.

But Koza worries that the Constitution leaves too many matters unspecified. For instance, he says, “Nobody has the slightest idea how you would pick the members of the convention. It's anybody's guess, but presumably each state would have one vote — at least if they follow the patterns of the first constitutional convention.”

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Outlook

More “Misfire” Elections?

Most experts expect the Electoral College to survive for the foreseeable future and for runners-up in the popular vote to sometimes win the presidency in the college.

“We're going to have more and more likelihood of the winner of the popular vote losing the presidency,” Ornstein says, due to demographic changes. He notes a recent Cook Political Report projection that the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate could win the popular vote by 5 million and still lose the presidency in the Electoral College.

“We're not going to get a constitutional amendment until there is a backlash” to the current system, he says. “That is going to take more than likely another couple of elections where people feel the system no longer represents them.”

A study by Making Every Vote Count concluded that “the loser of the popular vote will get elected president about one of every three times in this century,” says Hundt, the group's founder. In two of the five presidential elections held in since 2000, the candidate who finished second in the popular vote won the White House.

Despite increased support from Democrats, interstate compact founder Koza foresees continuing obstacles to achieving the popular vote. “It still has majority support” among the general public, he says, “but there's a lot more Republican voter opposition than there was” before Trump became the second consecutive GOP president to take the White House after losing the popular vote.

Similarly, Texas A&M's Edwards says increased support for the popular vote is diminished by its becoming “a partisan issue rather than a principled issue.” Also resisting change is that “the default position in politics is gridlock,” he says.

Ohio Northern University political scientist Alexander agrees. “We're pretty conservative by our nature when it comes to our institutions,” he says. “Changing structurally our institutions would take quite a bit of momentum.”

Lasting change would require bipartisan support, he adds. Otherwise, parties opposed to the change “are just looking to strip it away when they get power back.”

Alexander says he expects more states to join the interstate compact, “especially if we have another misfire election in 2020” with the popular-vote loser winning in the Electoral College.

Despite the challenges, Koza says there is “a good path to having [the compact] in place by 2024.”

Hundt says prospects depend heavily on state elections this year in Virginia and next year in several states that have demonstrated some support for the popular vote compact. Those include Minnesota, Michigan, Nevada, Maine, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, he says.

The Heritage Foundation's Stepman, who supports the Electoral College, says its abolition is possible over the long term.

“For 2020, I don't think there's going to be any change,” he says. “There's a danger for 2024 and beyond. This movement is going to continue.”

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Pro/Con

Should the president be elected by national popular vote?

Pro John R. Koza Co-founder and Chairman, National Popular Vote Inc.. Written for CQ Researcher, August 2019 The shortcomings of the current system of electing the president stem from state “winner-take-all” laws that award all of a state's electoral votes to the candidate receiving the most popular votes in each state. Because of these laws, five of our 45 presidents have come into office without winning the nationwide popular vote. Near-misses are common. President George W. Bush would have been defeated for re-election in 2004 by a shift of 59,393 popular votes in Ohio — despite his nationwide lead of 3 million votes. The national popular vote winner would have been defeated by a shift of 9,246 votes in 1976, 77,726 votes in 1968, 9,212 votes in 1960, and 1,711 votes in 1916. Moreover, presidential candidates almost never campaign in states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind. In 2012, all of the general-election campaign events (and virtually all campaign expenditures) were concentrated in the 12 closely divided “battleground” states where Republican nominee Mitt Romney's support was between 45 percent and 51 percent. More than two-thirds of the events (176 of 253) were held in four states (Ohio, Florida, Virginia, and Iowa). Thirty-eight states were totally ignored, including 12 of the 13 smallest states and almost all rural, agricultural, Southern, Western and Northeastern states. Similarly, in 2016 virtually all campaign events (94 percent) took place in the 12 states where GOP nominee Donald Trump's support was between 43 percent and 51 percent. More than two-thirds of the events (273 of 399) were in just six states (Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia). Battleground states also receive 7 percent more presidentially controlled grants, twice as many disaster declarations and numerous other favorable actions from presidents. Major legislation is frequently fashioned to cater to the battleground states needed to win the Electoral College. The winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes is not required by the U.S. Constitution. It was not debated at the 1787 Constitutional Convention. It was not mentioned in the Federalist Papers. It was used by only three states in the first presidential election in 1789. The winner-take-all method exists because of changeable state laws enacted by state legislatures under Article II of the Constitution, which states, “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors….” The president should be the person receiving the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, and presidential campaigns should solicit every voter in every state in every election.

Con Jarrett Stepman Contributor, The Daily Signal, Heritage Foundation. Written for CQ Researcher, August 2019 Forget the absurd arguments about how the Electoral College is only about protecting slavery or how the people who created it would have come to really hate it. The crux of the current debate comes down to what is better for the United States in 2019. Those who argue for abolishing the Electoral College say the current system is undemocratic and that it violates the principle of “one man, one vote.” But the Electoral College is neither obsolete nor unfair. The framers of the Constitution designed the Electoral College to accommodate a large and growing republic; the Electoral College reflected the state-based nature of our entire political system. Federalism was seen as an important roadblock to unchecked concentration of power. This is in part why the Electoral College is slightly skewed toward smaller states. The system gives smaller states more relative power because the number of electors in each state is based on the state's population plus the number of senators — two per state, regardless of the state's population. Small states have an edge, but this can sometimes be overstated. California has 55 Electoral College votes, Wyoming three. A candidate who wins most of the big states likely will win the election. Much has changed in the United States over the past two centuries, including how we conduct our presidential elections. Electors are selected by statewide elections, not by legislatures, as was common in the earliest days of the republic. Candidates today go on the campaign trail, a practice deemed unseemly by earlier generations. The Electoral College is more democratic today than when it was created. Do we elect better presidents now? Despite the changes, the core of what the Electoral College was designed to do has stayed remarkably consistent. Candidates must appeal to the states as states, and they must consider the unique challenges that regions and localities care about and find ways to win their support. Consider how much resentment currently exists because our most powerful media and cultural institutions are centered in places like New York and Washington, D.C. But those places do not entirely define the United States, as there are huge numbers of Americans with a different outlook (albeit dispersed more widely across the vast middle parts of the country). So what exactly would be accomplished by abolishing the Electoral College? It would result in a less secure voting process in which voting fraud would be more likely and recounts astronomically more difficult, with large swaths of Americans being ignored, possibly for generations. All that would happen just to stop the rare occurrence in which the national popular vote does not match the Electoral College vote. This is hardly a recipe for a better political future.

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Short Features

Election Processes Altered After 2000 Fiasco

The bizarre resolution of the 2000 presidential campaign began at 7:47 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST) on Nov. 7, when NBC became the first national television network to project that Democrat Al Gore would win Florida's 25 electoral votes, the fourth largest prize in the Electoral College, giving him enough to win the presidency.

Recounts, court decisions and protests would consume the next 35 days — a debacle that was an embarrassment for both the American election system and for the news media, which kept changing their minds about the results on election night and in the wee hours the next morning.

The media's original erroneous calls for Gore, the outgoing vice president, were based on actual votes from model precincts and on interviews with voters as they exited polling places, conducted by Voter News Service, a consortium created by The Associated Press, ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox and NBC. About two hours later, as more actual votes were counted, the media began having second thoughts and started to retract the predictions of a Gore win.

At 2:16 a.m. EST, networks began saying that Republican George W. Bush, the Texas governor, had won. Then at about 4 a.m. they abandoned that prediction and declared the race too close to call.

The projection in Bush's favor, however, had led Gore to phone him to concede, which Gore then later withdrew. The media were criticized not only for their inaccuracy but for declaring Gore the winner before all Florida precincts had closed.

“We don't just have egg on our face,” “NBC Nightly News” Anchor Tom Brokaw said. “We have an omelet.”1

Preparing for a long post-election legal battle, the candidates then assembled high-profile teams of lawyers, headed by former secretaries of state — James Baker III for Bush and Warren Christopher for Gore.

Delegates at the Democratic National Convention in Boston in July 2004 hold up a banner condemning the “hanging chads” that bedeviled the 2000 Florida recount of ballots in the presidential race between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore. Controversy over the recount spurred jurisdictions to review and update their voting systems. (AFP/Getty Images/Robyn Beck)

After a machine recount found Bush ahead in Florida by about 300 votes, Gore asked for a manual recount of machine ballots in Democratic-leaning counties that had recorded as either having no vote for president (under-votes) or multiple votes (over-votes). Palm Beach County's “butterfly ballots,” which listed candidates' names on both sides with punch-hole spots in the middle, were suspected of confusing voters as to which candidate they were voting for.

National attention also focused on defective punch-card ballots used in some precincts, exposing Americans to the jargon of “hanging” (partially punched out but still attached) and “dimpled” (dented) chads — the perforated parts of the ballots that voters punched. Videos and still photos showed election workers staring intently at individual ballots to determine whether hanging or dimpled chads showed a voter's intention.

Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who at the time co-chaired Bush's Florida campaign, oversaw the recount. She ordered that results be posted by Nov. 14, even if the recounts were not complete, but the Florida Supreme Court stayed her order, and the recounts went on. On Nov. 26, she certified that Bush had won by 537 votes. Legal challenges continued, as did the vote counting, until Dec. 12, when the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5 to 4, with conservatives comprising the majority, to stop the counting, effectively making Bush president.2

Bush's 537-vote lead gave him a 271-268 Electoral College victory — one vote more than was needed for election. (One elector abstained.) But the controversy continued, spilling over into the Electoral College.

Although Gore had conceded on Dec. 13 and urged his supporters to accept the outcome, when Congress met in joint session on Jan. 6, 2001, to officially count the electoral votes, 20 members of the U.S. House sought to disqualify the Florida electors on the grounds that black votes had been suppressed. Gore, presiding as vice president, ruled the House members' objections out of order because they were not supported by a senator, as was required.3

A Gallup Poll, after the Supreme Court ruling, found 59 percent of Americans favored abolishing the Electoral College, down from 67 percent in 1980 and 73 percent in 1977. The drop occurred in large part because the once-nonpartisan issue had become partisan, with Republican support for the change dropping more than Democratic support increased.4

In the aftermath of the 2000 election debacle, government officials and the media examined their election procedures and coverage. The media pledged not to declare winners until all of a state's precincts closed, a promise they had made earlier but violated.5

In 2002, Congress authorized $3.9 billion in federal funds to upgrade election equipment, especially punch-card systems, and established a federal commission to develop voluntary standards for voting systems.6 State and local election officials spent the money primarily on optical scanners, which read paper ballots digitally, and electronic voting machines, some of which were later found susceptible to undetectable error and fraud.

Critics say electronic machines should produce paper records that voters can check for accuracy before casting and that election workers can recount by hand if necessary, especially after recent revelations that Russia meddled in U.S. elections in 2016 and 2018.7

Two independent investigations financed by media and academic groups concluded in 2001 that more voters went to the polls in Florida in 2000 intending to vote for Gore than for Bush, and that:

• Gore likely would have won a hand recount of the statewide over-votes and under-votes, which his attorneys never requested, but

• Bush likely would have won the hand recount of under-votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered — which the U.S. Supreme Court halted — but by a smaller margin than the certified 537 votes.8

By the time the independent studies were released, the 9/11 terrorist attacks had occurred and the nation's attention was focused elsewhere.9

— Tom Price

[1] David Bauder, “Networks Try To Explain Blown Call,” The Associated Press, The Washington Post, Nov. 8, 2000, https://tinyurl.com/yy4f44ds.

[2] See Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000), https://tinyurl.com/yyc6lklk.

[3] Alison Mitchell, “Over Some Objections, Congress Certifies Electoral Vote,” The New York Times, Jan. 7, 2001, https://tinyurl.com/yxczyoxe.

[4] Frank Newport, “Americans Support Proposal to Eliminate Electoral College System,” Gallup, Jan. 5, 2001, https://tinyurl.com/y3bax9kg; “Gallup Polls: Consistent Super-Majority Support for a National Popular Vote,” FairVote, https://tinyurl.com/y4qtugdf.

[5] The history of the 2000 Florida election was drawn from Kenneth Jost and Greg Giroux, “Electoral College,” CQ Researcher, Dec. 8, 2000, pp. 977-1008, https://tinyurl.com/y6k8d4vj; and Presidential Elections 1789-2004, CQ Press (2005).

[6] Tom Price, “Cyberpolitics,” CQ Researcher, Sept. 17, 2004, pp. 757-780, https://tinyurl.com/y24lj26f.

[7] Tom Price, “Election Security and Voting Rights,” CQ Researcher, Oct. 12, 2018, pp. 849-872, https://tinyurl.com/y2a3gr74.

[8] Wade Payson-Denney, “So, who really won? What the Bush v. Gore studies showed,” CNN, updated Oct. 31, 2015, https://tinyurl.com/ybkx7f3v.

[9] Ibid.

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Supporters of Popular-Vote Elections Say They Will Prevail

For Reed Hundt, the campaign for the popular vote is personal.

“I got interested in this,” he explains, “because I'm the only person in the history of the United States who went to high school and to law school with people who won the popular vote and did not become president.”

They are:

• Al Gore, Hundt's classmate at the District of Columbia's St. Albans School, a former vice president who won the popular vote in 2000 but lost to Texas Gov. George W. Bush in the Electoral College after the Supreme Court halted a recount of the popular votes.

• Hillary Clinton, a Yale Law School classmate, who beat Donald Trump by nearly 3 million popular votes in 2016 but lost in the Electoral College by 77 votes.

Hundt's response to his unique experience was to co-found and chair Making Every Vote Count, a nonprofit organization that researches election-related issues and advocates for choosing presidents based on the popular vote.

“When it happened to Al, we thought it was an anomaly,” recalls Hundt, a former Federal Communications Commission chairman and current CEO of the Coalition for Green Capital, an environmental group. “It didn't seem to be systemic. When it happened with Hillary, it was much different. She won by millions of votes yet did not win in the Electoral College.”

Reed Hundt, chairman and CEO of Making Every Vote Count, advocates electing the nation's president by popular vote. (Making Every Vote Count)

If the Electoral College remains as currently constituted, Hundt's organization has projected, a third of presidential elections in this century will go to the loser of the popular vote. Besides being fairer, he argues, having the president elected by popular vote would increase voter turnout by making ballots matter in every precinct in the country.

Supporters of the Electoral College say the founders created it as part of a federal system that divided power among the states and the federal government, and it wasn't intended to be purely democratic. “Very few founders wanted a [presidential selection] system based on popular vote,” says Jarrett Stepman, a contributor to the Heritage Foundation publication, The Daily Signal. “They saw the Electoral College as a compromise that gave a fair amount of leeway to the states.”

John Koza — who is encouraging states to cast their electoral votes for the candidate who wins the national popular vote — first got interested in changing how presidents are elected in the 1960s. He was studying for a Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Michigan, and the Electoral College was the subject of much public debate, he recalls.

Democratic Sen. Birch Bayh of Indiana launched his nearly successful campaign to replace the Electoral College with the popular vote in 1966. By 1968 public support for the switch had peaked at 80 percent in a Gallup Poll, after Republican Richard M. Nixon defeated Democratic Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey by less than 1 percent of the popular vote and won a majority in the Electoral College, even though segregationist third-party candidate George Wallace won 46 Electoral College votes.

Before the election many had worried that Wallace's strength might throw the decision to Congress, which, according to the Constitution, occurs when no candidate wins a majority of the Electoral College votes. After the election both Nixon and Humphrey supported switching to the popular vote. In 1969, the U.S. House voted 338-70 for a constitutional amendment to replace the Electoral College with the popular vote, but the measure died in a Senate filibuster, led by segregationist senators who reportedly feared the measure would reduce Southern whites' influence.10

Koza's response at the time was to invent a board game based on the Electoral College, which he describes as “manipulating the winner-take-all rule to win the White House. It was not a commercial success, because it was way too complicated.”

After obtaining his degree, Koza co-invented the rub-off lottery ticket and promoted the establishment of state lotteries around the country.

He returned to the Electoral College issue after close elections were decided by who won Florida's electoral votes in 2000 and Ohio's in 2004, he says. Also in 2004, he says, Colorado voters defeated a proposal to divide the state's electors among candidates according to the statewide popular vote, rather than have the popular vote winner get all the state's electoral votes.

Barry Fadem, an elections attorney who consults with organizations running initiative and referendum campaigns, was working with the proponents of the Colorado proposal. After the Colorado vote, Fadem and Koza, who had become friends while working on lottery campaigns together, began discussing how the method of electing the president could be changed.

Fadem says the popular vote issue “has greater personal resonance” for him than all the other issues he has worked on during his career. “I have followed presidential campaigns very closely over many years, and I was struck by the fact that the voters of the United States aren't really electing the president of the United States,” Fadem says. “The voters in a few states are. I just didn't understand how that could take place in a great country like ours.”

Koza then wrote a plan for picking the president by popular vote without amending the Constitution, by getting states to agree to a compact promising to award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. With the help of others, Koza and Fadem have turned the plan into a book, which they published in 2006 to launch their campaign. Fadem is president of the National Popular Vote Inc., the organization that is recruiting states to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, and Koza is chairman.

To date, 15 states and the District of Columbia have joined the compact. The jurisdictions control 196 electoral votes, 74 fewer than the majority needed to elect the president. The compact will take effect when it controls the 270 votes.

Asked about prospects, Fadem says: “The only question is when, not if” that happens.

— By Tom Price

[10] Jesse Wegman, “The Man Who Changed the Constitution, Twice,” The New York Times, March 14, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y32b6ef6; Kurtis Lee, “In 1969, Democrats and Republicans united to get rid of the electoral college,” Los Angeles Times, Dec. 19, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y3ght897; and Kenneth Jost and Greg Giroux, “Electoral College” CQ Researcher, Dec. 8, 2000, pp. 977-1008.

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Bibliography

Books

Alexander, Robert M. , Representation and the Electoral College , Oxford University Press, 2019. An Ohio Northern University political scientist explains the theories about representation that produced the college, and the many criticisms of it.

Edwards, George C. III , Why the Electoral College Is Bad for America , 3rd Edition, Yale University Press, 2019. A Texas A&M political science professor updates his earlier studies with an analysis of the 2016 presidential election and argues that the method Americans use to choose presidents is undemocratic and should be replaced.

Koza, John R. , et al., Every Vote Equal: A State-Based Plan for Electing the President by National Popular Vote, 4th Edition , National Popular Vote Press, 2013. The advocacy organization that undertook a national campaign calling on states to cast their electoral votes for the winner of the popular vote explains its position.

Ross, Tara , The Indispensable Electoral College: How the Founders' Plan Saves Our Country from Mob Rule , Gateway Editions, 2017. A conservative lawyer and author explains that the country's founders aimed to create a federal republic, rather than a pure democracy, and argues that the Electoral College still plays a worthwhile role within that system.

Articles

Boccagno, Julia , “Which candidates did the seven ‘faithless’ electors support?” CBS News, Dec. 21, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y2hnmpze. A reporter looks at electors in the 2016 presidential election who reneged on their pledges to support the winning candidate in their state, whether that candidate was Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton.

DeWitt, Darin, and Thomas Schwartz , “A Calamitous Compact,” PS: Political Science & Politics, October 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y2q3ra5g. Political scientists from California State University at Long Beach (DeWitt) and the University of California at Los Angeles (Schwartz) question the constitutionality of the interstate compact to have electors vote for the candidate who wins the most popular votes nationwide, saying the practice would cause “mischief” in presidential elections.

Hamilton, Alexander , “The Federalist Papers: No. 68, The Mode of Electing the President,” New York Packet, March 14, 1788, Yale Law School, https://tinyurl.com/y524atkj. Hamilton, one of three authors who wrote essays supporting ratification of the U.S. Constitution, defends the Electoral College as the best way to avoid “tumult and disorder.”

Koza, John R. , “A Not-So-Calamitous Compact: A Response to DeWitt and Schwartz,” PS: Political Science & Politics, October 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y3n4g5lh. The author of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact offers a point-by-point rebuttal of the arguments made by Dewitt and Schwartz in their criticism of the compact.

Nalewicki, Jennifer , “The Electoral College Has Been Divisive Since Day One,” Smithsonian, Dec. 7, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y4hcumy3. A journalist explains that Americans have fought over proposals to eliminate or reform the Electoral College ever since it was created.

Signer, Michael , “The Electoral College Was Created to Stop Demagogues Like Trump,” Time, Nov. 17, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y3r2qayk. The then-mayor of Charlottesville, Va., argues in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 presidential election that electors pledged to Donald Trump should cast their votes for someone else.

Wegman, Jesse , “The Man Who Changed the Constitution, Twice,” The New York Times, March 18, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y32b6ef6. An editorial writer recounts how a senator from Indiana nearly prevailed in his 1966 campaign for a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College and elect presidents based on the popular vote.

Reports and Studies

Durran, Dale R. , “Whose votes count the least in the Electoral College?” The Conversation, March 13, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y3adscvo. A University of Washington mathematician says the Electoral College gives voters in midsized states the least influence in electing a president.

Kriner, Douglas, and Andrew Reeves , “The Electoral College And Presidential Particularism,” Boston University Law Review, May 2014, https://tinyurl.com/yynjfato. Political scientists at Boston University (Kriner) and Washington University in St. Louis (Reeves) offer evidence that presidents “routinely pursue policies” designed to boost their standing in swing states.

Neale, Thomas H. , “Electoral College Reform: Contemporary Issues for Congress,” Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, Oct. 6, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/yxoujxqm. A government expert at the research arm of Congress summarizes Electoral College controversies and suggested reforms, such as switching to the popular vote.

Virgin, Sheahan G. , “Competing loyalties in electoral reform: An analysis of the U.S. electoral college,” Electoral Studies, July 22, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y6bs5vbt. A Vanderbilt University political scientist says proposals to abolish the Electoral College and elect presidents by popular vote divide Democrats based on whether they come from a swing state.

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The Next Step

Amending the Constitution

“Constitutional amendment introduced to abolish the Electoral College,” CBS News , April 2, 2009, https://tinyurl.com/yxv4qkr5. Four Democratic senators introduced a bill earlier this year that would start the process of abolishing the Electoral College through a constitutional amendment.

Heller, Marsha, and Brittany Jacob , “Political expert: Amending the constitution for the Electoral College is politically impossible,” KFVS, April 2, 2009, https://tinyurl.com/yxwr43nw. A political expert argues that partisanship over the issue of keeping or abolishing the Electoral College has made movement on the issue more difficult.

Marcin, Tim , “2020 Democrats are calling for abolishing the Electoral College — it nearly happened a few decades ago,” Politico, March 24, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6lm978g. In the 1970s, Democratic Sen. Birch Bayh of Indiana spearheaded a movement in Congress to abolish the Electoral College with a constitutional amendment, but his effort was ultimately held up by Southern senators.

Interstate Compact

“Agreement Among the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote,” National Popular Vote, undated, https://tinyurl.com/y9zn7ur9. The organization behind the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact argues that the Electoral College's winner-take-all system and heavy emphasis on battleground states are bad for democracy.

Rakich, Nathaniel , “The Movement to Skip the Electoral College Is About to Pass a Major Milestone,” FiveThirtyEight, March 5, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3nls2lf. Colorado became the first swing state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, but all the states that have joined the compact so far have done so primarily with the support of Democrats in the state legislatures.

Staver, Anna , “A repeal of Colorado's new national popular vote law appears headed to the November 2020 ballot,” The Denver Post, Aug. 20, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y4cc6ueb. Organizers in Colorado who do not want their state to lose its importance as a presidential battleground appear to have enough signatures to put a referendum on the 2020 ballot to repeal the state's new national popular vote law.

Presidential Campaign Strategies

Ansari, Hibah, and Micah Soellner , “Wisconsin will be a hot spot for 2020 presidential candidates. Here's how the state is preparing,” Appleton Post-Crescent, July 17, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y33mrj69. While cities in Wisconsin are ready to benefit from the mild economic boost and increased name recognition offered by campaign events, some residents are already tired of, and unswayed by, political rallies.

Busch, Monica , “Experts Explain How 2020 Swing States Will Be Determined,” Bustle, May 22, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y52q6855. Political experts cited in this article believe states that are closely divided along partisan lines will receive more attention from presidential candidates in 2020.

Cohn, Nate , “The Electoral College's Real Problem: It's Biased toward the Big Battlegrounds,” The New York Times, March 22, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yyh25f9w. A data journalist says the practice of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate that wins that state's plurality — the winner-take-all rule — enables candidates to win the nationwide popular vote but lose the Electoral College vote.

Winner-Take-All

Contreras, Guillermo , “San Antonio judge tosses suit related to Electoral College,” My San Antonio, Feb. 26, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y32m2zoz. A Texas judge tossed out a suit from the League of United Latin American Citizens and other plaintiffs who challenged the constitutionality of Texas' winner-take-all system for selecting electors on the grounds that it diluted the political power of racial minorities. The plaintiffs have appealed.

Maker, Janet , “Understanding the Electoral College” LA Progressive, June 9, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y2r379gp. A supporter of the national popular vote movement argues that the winner-take-all system of selecting electors discounts the will of too many voters.

Wyler, Tom , “Don't kill the Electoral College. Just make it work better,” CNN, March 19, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y2tbykuk. A former Commerce Department official in the Obama administration argues for a mixed-proportional system of selecting electors, in which the margins of victory in most states would determine how many electoral votes each candidate receives.

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Contacts

Cato Institute
1000 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Washington, DC 20001
202-842-0200;
Libertarian think tank that tends to favor the Electoral College for electing presidents.

Equal Citizens
equalcitizens.us
Election-reform group that advocates and litigates for ending winner-take-all allocation of electors and also favors the national popular vote.

Heritage Foundation
214 Massachusetts Ave., N.E., Washington DC 20002-4999
202-546-4400
www.heritage.org
Conservative think tank that tends to support the Electoral College.

Making Every Vote Count
www.makingeveryvotecount.com
Organization that researches election issues and advocates switch to the national popular vote.

National Popular Vote Inc.
Box 1441, Los Altos, CA 94023
650-472-1587
www.nationalpopularvote.com
Organization that campaigns for states to agree to have their Electoral College electors vote for the winner of the national popular vote.

National Archives and Records Administration
700 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Washington, DC 20408
866-272-6272
www.archives.gov
Official repository of the federal government that displays information about the Electoral College at www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college.

National Constitution Center
525 Arch St., Philadelphia, PA 19106
215-409-6600
https://constitutioncenter.org/
Organization that disseminates information about the Constitution and hosts debates on constitutional issues.

NonProfit Vote
2464 Massachusetts Ave., Suite 210, Cambridge, MA 02140
617-357-8683
www.nonprofitvote.org/our-mission
Organization that helps nonprofit groups encourage elections participation.

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Footnotes

[1] Sarah Zimmerman, “Oregon joins interstate agreement to ignore Electoral College,” The Associated Press, June 5, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6betexr; Chris Lehman, “Governor signs bill to change the way Oregon helps choose the president,” The Oregonian, June 13, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3km38fu.

[2] John Koza, “Adopt our plan for a popular vote,” USA Today, Nov. 10, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y5452two.

[3] Allen Guelzo and James Hulme, “In defense of the electoral college,” The Washington Post, Nov. 15, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/jqkddln.

[4] Dimitri Simes, “Mark Levin: ‘Why Would a Small State Be Part of the Union’ Without Electoral College?” CNS News, March 20, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6xmf8e4.

[5] Miles Parks, “Abolishing The Electoral College Would Be More Complicated Than It May Seem,” NPR, March 22, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y37kdypx.

[6] Jim Galloway, “Before Donald Trump, Georgia dallied with idea of a popular-vote president,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Dec. 10, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/yym72oyc.

[7] E.J. Montini, “Montini: Will Arizona help kill the Electoral College and let the vote winner … win?” The Arizona Republic, Nov. 16, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y3swhlam.

[8] Jeffrey M. Jones, “Americans Split on Proposals for Popular Vote,” Gallup, May 14, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yys8h57n; Jesse Wegman, “The Man Who Changed the Constitution, Twice,” The New York Times, March 14, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y32b6ef6; Art Swift, “Americans' Support for Electoral College Rises Sharply,” Gallup, Dec. 2, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y4auxtaz; and Lydia Saad, “Americans Call for Term Limits, End to Electoral College,” Gallup, Jan. 18, 2013, https://tinyurl.com/y56fzr2s.

[9] “Electoral College Fast Facts,” U.S. House of Representatives, https://tinyurl.com/y6m6ns66.

[10] Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Age of Jackson (1945); Presidential Elections 1789-2004.

[11] “Annual Estimates of the Resident Population: April 1, 2010 to July 1, 2018,” U.S. Census Bureau, https://tinyurl.com/y23uq8fl; “1910 Census: Volume 3. Population, Reports by States, with Statistics for Counties, Cities, and Other Civil Divisions: Nebraska-Wyoming, Alaska, Hawaii, and Porto Rico [sic],” U.S. Census, https://tinyurl.com/y6a4fgjv.

[12] E.J. Montini, “Will Arizona lawmakers (again) try to kill the Electoral College?” The Arizona Republic, Jan. 5, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y2e3r6c5; Jonathan Mahler and Steve Eder, “The Electoral College Is Hated by Many. So Why Does It Endure?” The New York Times, Nov. 10, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/zyb2lkz.

[13] John Yoo and James Phillips, “Don't demonize the electoral college — or the framers — as racist,” Los Angeles Times, April 11, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yxpzke9f.

[14] John Yoo, “Sudden liberal opposition to Electoral College not about democracy, but about power,” The Hill, Nov. 16, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y54yez3o.

[15] Andrew Rudalevige, “The electoral college has serious problems. So do any alternatives,” The Washington Post, Nov. 15, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/j5zyzuw.

[16] Brennan Weiss, “Ranked: The greatest US presidents, according to political scientists,” Business Insider, Feb. 18, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3vjnybp.

[17] Hans von Spakovsky, “Destroying the Electoral College: The Anti-Federalist National Popular Vote Scheme,” Heritage Foundation, Oct. 27, 2011, https://tinyurl.com/yyjafrm7.

[18] Robert Speel, “You'll hear these 4 arguments in defense of the Electoral College — here's why they're wrong,” The Conversation, updated Aug. 16, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yyqwbq8t.

[19] Philip Bump, “Trump's defensive defense of the electoral college doesn't make much sense,” The Washington Post, March 20, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yxsfz8o8.

[20] “Census Bureau Reveals Fastest-Growing Large Cities,” U.S. Census Bureau, May 24, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y3lhkfdc.

[21] Allen C. Guelzo and James H. Hulme, “The suit to make Electoral College more ‘fair’ could make it worse,” The Hill, March 22, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y2sfa3et.

[22] Claire Daviss, “Fuzzy Math: Wrong Way Reforms for Allocating Electoral Votes,” FairVote, Jan. 28, 2015, https://tinyurl.com/y3zeuw7t.

[23] Thea Cohen “Here's Why Splitting Electoral Votes By Congressional District Is Not The Answer,” Making Every Vote Count, June 27, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yyeqyox3.

[24] Arnold Barnett and Edward Kaplan, “Op-Ed: How to cure the electoral college,” Los Angeles Times, Dec. 16, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y446sny3.

[25] Guelzo and Hulme, op. cit.

[26] Amy Sherman, “The electoral college vs. The popular vote: Could states do an end-run around the current system?” Tampa Bay Times, Nov. 17, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y4serlep.

[27] Darin DeWitt and Thomas Schwartz, “A Calamitous Compact,” PS: Political Science & Politics, October 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y2q3ra5g.

[28] William G. Ross, “Popular Vote Compact: Fraught With Constitutional Perils,” Jurist, Feb. 28, 2012, https://tinyurl.com/y6hxydhf.

[29] Ibid.

[30] Tara Ross, “Ross: Why Colorado should reject the National Popular Vote,” The Complete Colorado, Jan. 18, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y25p5tkf.

[31] Derek T. Muller, “The National Popular Vote is a pretty terrible way to change our way of electing the president,” Excess of Democracy blog, Nov. 15, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/yx8up2nd.

[32] “Answering Myths,” National Popular Vote Inc., https://tinyurl.com/yyluxr9d.

[33] “Committees at the Constitutional Convention,” USConstitution.net, https://tinyurl.com/y5benxks; “Five things you need to know about the Electoral College,” Constitution Daily, the National Constitution Center, Oct. 17, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y6o8lmum; Matt Pearce, “Why our presidents are elected by a clique of elites,” Los Angeles Times, Dec. 18, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y2pbw4wr.

[34] Pearce, ibid.

[35] James Miller “Five myths about democracy,” The Washington Post, Sept. 7, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y3eh62l6. Also see James Madison, “The Federalist Papers: No. 10: The Same Subject Continued. The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection, From the New York Packet,” Nov. 23, 1787, https://tinyurl.com/yybweabm.

[36] Sean Wilentz, “The Electoral College and the Myth of a Proslavery Ploy,” History News Network, April 14, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y5ng4kyw.

[37] “Five things you need to know about the Electoral College,” op. cit.

[38] Jennifer Nalewicki, “The Electoral College Has Been Divisive Since Day One,” Smithsonian, Dec. 7, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y4hcumy3; John Ferling, “Thomas Jefferson, Aaron Burr and the Election of 1800,” Smithsonian, Nov. 1, 2004, https://tinyurl.com/y5lawbou.

[39] Kenneth Jost and Greg Giroux, “Electoral College,” CQ Researcher, Dec. 8, 2000, pp. 977-1008, https://tinyurl.com/y6k8d4vj.

[40] Nalewicki, op. cit.; “All Amendments to the United States Constitution,” University of Minnesota Human Rights Library, https://tinyurl.com/gogbfba.

[41] Henry Olsen, “Conservatives: Think before you defend the electoral college,” The Washington Post, March 21, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yxg9ncds.

[42] John R. Koza, “A Not-So-Calamitous Compact,” PS: Political Science & Politics, October 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y3p5en3s.

[43] George C. Edwards III, Why the Electoral College is Bad for America, 3rd Edition (2019), p. 21.

[44] Presidential Elections 1789-2004, op. cit.

[45] “Black Leaders During Reconstruction,” History.com, June 24, 2010, https://tinyurl.com/hjznbcp.

[46] Eugene H. Roseboom and Alfred E. Eckes Jr., A History of Presidential Elections Fourth Edition (1979); Presidential Elections 1789-2004, op. cit.; and Melvin I. Urofsky, “Jim Crow law,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, Aug. 21, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/nowxjhu.

[47] Presidential Elections 1789-2004, ibid.

[48] Edwards III, op. cit., pp. 57-58; Presidential Elections 1789-2004, op. cit., pp. 152, 237, 239.

[49] Jost and Giroux, op. cit.

[50] Presidential Elections 1789-2004, op. cit.

[51] Kurtis Lee, “In 1969, Democrats and Republicans united to get rid of the electoral college,” Los Angeles Times, Dec. 19, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y3ght897.

[52] Wegman, op. cit.; Jost and Giroux, op. cit.

[53] Wegman, ibid.; Lee, op. cit.

[54] Warren Weaver Jr. “Carter Proposes End Of Electoral College In Presidential Votes,” The New York Times, March 23, 1977, https://tinyurl.com/y578qjhj; Lee, op. cit.

[55] Presidential Elections 1789-2004, op. cit.

[56] “Official 2016 Presidential General Election Results, General Election Date: Nov. 8, 2016,” Federal Election Commission, https://tinyurl.com/y7x4l8sb; “Pennsylvania Presidential Race Results: Donald J. Trump Wins,” The New York Times, Aug. 1, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/yxdzhwab; and “2016 Presidential Election Results,” Politico, https://tinyurl.com/y5wxzulr.

[57] Michael Signer, “The Electoral College Was Created to Stop Demagogues Like Trump,” Time, Nov. 17, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/gwtjrxw.

[58] Dan Nowicki, “What's the point of the Electoral College?” The Arizona Republic, Dec. 19, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/yywghskj; David M. Jackson, “Trump team slams critics for electoral ‘spin job,’” USA Today, Dec. 19, 2016; and Tom Troy, “Electors' effort to pick Kasich is expected to fail,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Dec. 6, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/yyxuvwat.

[59] “The Team,” Equal Votes, https://tinyurl.com/y2wcegxp.

[60] Greg Bluestein, “Anti-Trump groups step up pressure on Georgia GOP electors,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Dec. 15, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/yykfhskw.

[61] Robert Samuels, “In last-shot bid, thousands urge electoral college to block Trump at Monday vote,” The Washington Post, Dec. 17, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y6836mh7.

[62] Bluestein, op. cit.; Julia Boccagno, “Which candidates did the seven ‘faithless’ electors support?” CBS News, Dec. 21, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y2hnmpze.

[63] Mary Clare Jalonick, “AP Explains: The election's just beginning on Election Day,” The Associated Press, Oct. 31, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/yycgcnzj; Nowicki, op. cit.

[64] Ellen Powell, “Will Barbara Boxer succeed in abolishing the Electoral College?” The Christian Science Monitor, Nov. 16, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/yxgeyd2n.

[65] National Popular Vote, https://tinyurl.com/4f3tpo.

[66] Michael Shepherd, “Maine House reverses itself again to oppose effort to link Electoral College to popular vote,” Bangor Daily News, June 17, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yx96a9zh.

[67] Ryan Tarinelli, “Nevada governor vetoes national popular vote compact,” The Associated Press, May 30 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3qovuns.

[68] Koza, “A Not-So-Calamitous Compact,” op. cit.; Speel, op. cit.

[69] Steven Shepard, “The 11 states that will determine the 2016 election,” Politico, June 8, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/hxynmr9.

[70] Adam Wollner, “The ‘new swing states:’ Presidential battleground map shifts heading into 2020,” McClatchy, Dec. 12, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y4vunhj9; “2016 Presidential Election Results,” op. cit.

[71] National Popular Vote, op. cit.

[72] Jesse Paul, “Federal judge tosses ‘faithless’ presidential elector lawsuit against Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams,” The Denver Post, April 10, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y24zajqm.

[73] Ibid.; Meagan Flynn, “He tried to stop Trump in the electoral college. A court says his ‘faithless’ ballot was legal,” The Washington Post, Aug. 22, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y49v7rpu.

[74] Jim Camden, “Supreme Court: ‘Faithless electors’ can be fined $1,000,” The Spokesman-Review, May 23, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y49gc9c7.

[75] Ibid.

[76] “Congressman Cohen Introduces Constitutional Amendments,” Office of U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, Jan. 3, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y4y757hs.

[77] Julia Conley, “Sen. Jeff Merkley introduces bill to abolish ‘undemocratic’ Electoral College,” Salon, April 1, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6y94xf2.

[78] E.J. Dionne Jr., “We need constitutional reform — starting with the Electoral College,” The Washington Post, April 3, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y2ekv23t.

[79] James Hohmann, “The Daily 202: Scott Walker plans to crusade for a balanced-budget amendment via constitutional convention,” The Washington Post, March 19, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y4t5qlgw; Charles M. Blow, “Liberals, This is War,” The New York Times, Oct. 8, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y6mspkgg.

[80] David Scharfenberg, “Time to rewrite the Constitution?” The Boston Globe, Oct. 7, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y4uccccj.

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About the Author

Tom Price, a contributing writer for CQ Researcher, is a Washington-based freelance journalist who previously was a correspondent in the Cox Newspapers Washington Bureau and chief politics writer for The Dayton Daily News and The (Dayton) Journal Herald. He is author or co-author of five books including, with former U.S. Rep. Tony Hall (D-Ohio), Changing The Face of Hunger: One Man's Story of How Liberals, Conservatives, Democrats, Republicans and People of Faith Are Joining Forces to Help the Hungry, the Poor and the Oppressed. His previous CQ Researcher reports include examinations of social media in politics, big data and the U.S. Census.

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