Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect wrote recently that while people are pulling down statues of Confederate leaders, they should also turn to scrapping the Electoral College as a legacy of slave owners that warps our democracy.
Meyerson on TAP
One More Confederate Monument to Destroy: The Electoral College
For anyone who still wonders why Confederate monuments need to come down, let me refer you to a famous line from the great bard of the white South, William Faulkner. In the white Southern universe—that is, in matters of white racism—Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
The statues of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and their traitorous ilk were erected to perpetuate and reinforce white supremacy, and hence are completely valid targets for teardowns. But America suffers from one particular legacy of racism more damaging than the monuments, and the great Black Lives Matter movement that is seeking to create a more egalitarian nation needs to target that legacy, too.
I refer to the Electoral College…
The Supreme Court, by striking down…the ability of a presidential elector to vote for a candidate other than the one that their state’s voters supported, affirmed that popular majorities determine whom a state will support for president—but not whom the nation will support. Al Gore received half a million more votes than George W. Bush in 2000 but lost the Electoral College vote to him. Hillary Clinton received nearly three million more votes than Donald Trump, but also lost in the Electoral College…
The Electoral College was one of the last particulars that the Constitution’s drafters settled upon. Two factors led to its creation. The first was the pre-democratic belief that only a handful of men drawn from the nation’s elite had the brains and dispositions to select a president. The second was the insistence of the drafters from slave states that the presidency should not be determined by popular vote, as the eligible electorate (at that time, white men of property) in Northern, non-slave states exceeded and would likely continue to exceed the eligible electorate in the South. Their fear, of course, was that under a popular-vote system, an anti-slavery candidate might one day win the presidency. Hence, they created the Electoral College, which benefited slavery and the South by giving every state, no matter its population, two extra votes (reflective of its Senate representation) and by lumping slaves into their population count by tallying them as three-fifths of a person.
From a Southern perspective, the system worked brilliantly. Had the Democratic Party not split in two (into a Northern indifferent-to-slavery wing and a Southern rabidly pro-slavery wing) in 1860, the Electoral College would have perpetuated slavery until God knows when. Once slavery was abolished and the 15th Amendment to the Constitution ratified in 1870, the South had to find other ways to suppress Black voting, and with its current Republican friends on the Supreme Court, it has managed to do so to this very day.
But as the United States becomes more racially diverse, and as the governing principle of the Republican Party has overtly become white supremacy, that racist Republican right can only cling to power through its reliance on the Electoral College, which stands athwart the principle and reality of majority rule. (Having long favored suppressing minority rights, Republicans have also come to favor suppressing majority rule, now that it’s clear they can’t win majority support among the nation’s voters.)
In short, the Electoral College reflects and perpetuates the same values that those Confederate monuments reflected and perpetuated. Those who believe that Black Lives Matter need to topple this deeply undemocratic monstrosity, too.
~ HAROLD MEYERSON
Diane Ravitch's blog 
There is some debate about this among historians. For another view, see this:
This article is behind a pay wall. Whatever the history behind this cursed Electoral College, it should be dumped. Whoever gets the most popular votes should win, full stop, period.
Sorry
No problem, FLERP, not your fault. Sean Wilentz is a distinguished professor/scholar at Princeton University, so whatever he says carries weight. I’ll keep searching for the article, I’m sure it’s stashed somewhere, maybe at the PU web site. Thanks, anyhow.
Yes, agree 10,000%, it’s a biblical class obscenity that Gore and Clinton won the popular vote but were denied the presidency because of this idiotic Electoral College. Of course in Gore’s case, the SCOTUS also gave air support to Bush’s “win.” I often wonder how different things would be if we had had President Gore and President Hillary Clinton. Things that might have been; I think that we would have been massively better off. This time around people need to come out in droves and vote straight Democratic. The Electoral College needs to be flushed down the tubes into oblivion but are there enough politicians who are proposing such a process. The GOP is the huge stumbling block unless GOPers should lose because of the E.C., then we would see some action to dump it forthwith.
The Electoral College is an anachronism, a vestige of a bygone era that needs to go the way of the covered wagon. We should not have candidates winning by more than a million votes, but losing the election! https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/22/among-democracies-u-s-stands-out-in-how-it-chooses-its-head-of-state/
The National Popular Vote bill was approved in 2016 by a unanimous bipartisan House committee vote in both Georgia (16 electoral votes) and Missouri (10).
Since 2006, the bill has passed 41 state legislative chambers in 25 rural, small, medium, large, Democratic, Republican and purple states with 284 electoral votes, including one house in Arizona (11), Arkansas (6), Maine (4), Michigan (16), Minnesota (10), North Carolina (15), Oklahoma (7) and Virginia (13), and both houses in Nevada (6).
The bill has been enacted by 16 small, medium, and large jurisdictions with 196 electoral votes – 73% of the way to guaranteeing the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate with the most national popular votes.
When enacted by states with 270 electoral votes, it would change state winner-take-all laws (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), in the enacting states, without changing anything in the Constitution, again using the built-in method that the Constitution provides for states to make changes.
Last night I found a Breakfast Club interview with Jon Stewart. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GP9SZzseFqI Jon Stewart is like you, Diane, in that he is someone who teaches me humility and a willingness to admit to and learn from my mistakes. The last 15 or 20 minutes of the interview are therapy for me. In the whole second half of the video, they talk about race. And there is one main thing Stewart says we can do to overcome unfairness in this election, protect the vote. Voter suppression doesn’t care if there’s an Electoral College or not. Cities need plentiful polling places or mail-in ballots.
Republican governors will cut back polling places in Democratic cities.
It’s going to be difficult if not impossible to get rid of the electoral college with the required Constitutional amendment because many small states will oppose it.
Much easier to nullify it’s distorting impact (eg, with the National Popular vote interstate compact).
I disagree with Myerson’s characterization of the electoral college as the main motivation for the invention of the electoral college. Small state vs large state was one big motivation. Small state feared the dominance of the large states in an era when 99 % of the population was engaged in agriculture.
As the slavery issue became more a part of contention, northern opposition to the “peculiar institution” developed around the Free Soil movement. It held that ownership of slaves made slaveholders more powerful as individuals than voters in the free soil north. Since almost everybody saw Africans as incapable of functioning as independent voters, free soil thought ultimately led to the creation of the Republican Party and the election of Lincoln. The belief in the natural inferiority of the African made real reconstruction impossible. The “redeemers” sought to re-establish the old patriarchy in the South following the removal of occupation troops in 1877, aided and abetted by the old Free soil acceptance of the idea that Africans could never take care of themselves.
No where in any of this was a challenge to the Electoral College. Modern challenges to the Electoral College derive from the concentration of population in urban areas. Like the original small states, the states that are chiefly agricultural fear domination by the large urban areas.
When The SCOTUS was obliged to rule in 2000, it was evidence that the electoral college needed overhauling, but it was not considered by either party. Now it is obviously time to consider how we can govern with majority rule and minority acceptance. In this case, I refer to thee portion of the population whose vote is now much more powerful as the minority. We have to learn to understand each other, or our free society will go away.
Now we need to support the “Yes On National Popular Vote” campaign in Colorado, and vote for and urge state legislators in states with the 74 more electoral votes needed, to enact the National Popular Vote bill for the 2024 election.
The bill is 73% of the way to guaranteeing the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country. The bill changes state winner-take-all laws (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), without changing anything in the Constitution, using the built-in method that the Constitution provides for states to make changes.
It requires enacting states with 270 electoral votes to award their electoral votes to the winner of the most national popular votes.
All voters would be valued equally in presidential elections, no matter where they live.
NationalPopularVote
While I agree that the Electoral College should go, getting rid of it might open another pandora’s box.
“Abolishing The Electoral College Would Be More Complicated Than It May Seem”
“Fully overhauling the way the president is selected would take a Constitutional amendment, which would require the votes of two-thirds of the U.S. House of Representatives, two-thirds of the Senate, and three-fourths of the states.”
https://www.npr.org/2019/03/22/705627996/abolishing-the-electoral-college-would-be-more-complicated-than-it-may-seem
The danger is that while the process is going on, someone slips in language that ends up being worse.
Changing the U.S. Constitution must be approached with care and everyone must be paying attention, but that is impossible.
We choose governors by majority vote, why not the president?
No argument from me. If the majority of voters selected the president, G. W. Bush and Trump would have lost and the country would have been much better for their loss.
What I’m saying is that we must be careful what we wish for to make sure when we get rid of the Electoral College we don’t end up with something just as bad or worse. Whenever the country agrees to change the U.S. Constitution, anything can happen.
ALEC pushed for years for a Constitutional convention when the GOP held the upper hand.
August 3, 2017
“With Republicans in control of 32 state legislatures, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has been actively pushing the idea of a second Constitutional Convention to rewrite the US Constitution. The nation’s first and only Constitutional Convention took place in Philadelphia in 1787 with George Washington presiding.
“ALEC has cheered on the idea of a “con con” for years, passing multiple resolutions calling for changes to the Constitution, hosting workshops and handbooks and even draft resolutions laying out proposed rules of procedure. Everything has been quite cordial and controlled.”
https://billmoyers.com/story/alec-constitutional-convention/
To change the Constitution and get rid of the Electoral College, we have to make sure the that there are more blue states than red states and the GOP has lost its majorities across the board.
Lloyd, you beat me to it. I read with speed, but I write and revise like a snail. If snails could write. And revise.
The National Popular Vote bill would not change the Constitution.
ALEC opposes the National Popular Vote bill.
The Founders created the Electoral College, but 48 states eventually enacted state winner-take-all laws.
Unable to agree on any particular method for selecting presidential electors, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method exclusively to the states in Article II, Section 1
“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors….”
The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as “plenary” and “exclusive.”
The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country. It does not abolish the Electoral College.
The National Popular Vote bill is states with 270 electors replacing state winner-take-all laws that award all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who get the most popular votes in each separate state (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), in the enacting states, to guarantee the majority of Electoral College votes for, and the Presidency to, the candidate getting the most popular votes in the entire United States.
The bill retains the constitutionally mandated Electoral College and state control of elections, and uses the built-in method that the Constitution provides for states to make changes. It ensures that every voter is equal, every voter will matter, in every state, in every presidential election, and the candidate with the most votes wins, as in virtually every other election in the country.
Because the United States is a compact of 50 individual States, not a monolith. Popular vote for the President undermines the principle of strong LOCAL governance and weak federal governance. The Electoral College was created as a check and balance so that the most populous states do not overrun the least populous states. Each State should be governed first by the people of their respective State. This is why we have a system that starts with local ordinances, then State law, then Federal – not the other way around. The Presidency has gotten more powerful than intended and it is harmful for the country, as I’m sure you would agree Trump has proven that statement. Switching to the Popular Vote would concentrate more power to the Federal Government and that is the opposite of what should be happening.
I am a little nervous about even the idea of amending the Constitution these days. Just last year, when Republican libertarians were at the highest possible crest of power in Washington D.C., the Kochtopus was working toward a new constitutional convention. Some predicted it was just a few years away. They wanted to rewrite the whole Constitution and cement monarchical power for themselves. They are probably not done with that idea. Imagine a president selected not by the Electoral College but by the Senate. With a little corporate funded bipartisanship, that backfire would be entirely possible.
Right now, it’s more important to keep Trumpists and Kochists from trashing the Constitution we have than to amend it. And I can see the taxation without representation Tea Party nonsense a mile away if the popular vote becomes popular enough, and the power of small states like New Hampshire and Iowa is threatened. What we need is not an amendment. We just need Trump to keep being unbelievably stupid, Biden to keep being a pretty likable guy, and for everyone to be able to vote.
The National Popular Vote bill would not change the Constitution.
ALEC opposes the National Popular Vote bill.
With the National Popular Vote bill, when every popular vote counts and matters to the candidates equally, successful candidates will find a middle ground of policies appealing to the wide mainstream of America. Instead of playing mostly to local concerns in Pennsylvania and Michigan, candidates finally would have to form broader platforms for broad national support. Elections wouldn’t be about winning a handful of battleground states.
The National Popular Vote bill would not be doing away with the Electoral College, U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, state legislatures, etc. etc. etc.
With current statewide winner-take-all laws, a presidential candidate could lose despite winning 78%+ of the popular vote and 39 smaller states.
But, in 2016, among the 11 largest states: 7 voted Republican(Texas, Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia) and 4 voted Democratic (California, New York, Illinois, and New Jersey).
Attempts to elect the president through a national popular vote have been thwarted not by small states but instead by the white leaders of southern ones, who viewed the system as key to maintaining white supremacy.
Some leaders of the movement for a national popular vote came from small states: William Langer from North Dakota, John Pastore from Rhode Island, Mike Mansfield from Montana. Roll call votes show that the issue was not small states versus large states.
There is not a coalition of small states that functions politically. And they don’t necessarily have a lot in common.
The 8 smallest states (i.e., those with three electoral votes) together received only one of the nation’s 952 general-election campaign events in the 2008, 2012, and 2016 elections.
Fourteen of the 15 smallest states by population are ignored, like medium and big states where the statewide winner is predictable, because they’re not swing states. Small states are safe states. Only New Hampshire gets significant attention.
Support for a national popular vote has been strong in every smallest state surveyed in polls among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group
Among the 13 lowest population states, the National Popular Vote bill has passed in 9 state legislative chambers, and been enacted by 5 jurisdictions.
Now political clout comes from being among the handful of battleground states. 70-80% of states and voters are ignored by presidential campaign polling, organizing, ad spending, and visits. Their states’ votes were conceded months before by the minority parties in the states, taken for granted by the dominant party in the states, and ignored by all parties in presidential campaigns.
State winner-take-all laws negate any simplistic mathematical equations about the relative power of states based on their number of residents per electoral vote. Small state math means absolutely nothing to presidential campaign polling, organizing, ad spending, and visits, or to presidents once in office.
The small states do not share a political tendency.
In the 25 smallest states in 2008, the Democratic and Republican popular vote was almost tied (9.9 million versus 9.8 million), as was the electoral vote (57 versus 58).
In 2012, 24 of the nation’s 27 smallest states received no attention at all from presidential campaigns after the conventions. They were ignored despite their supposed numerical advantage in the Electoral College. In fact, the 8.6 million eligible voters in Ohio received more campaign ads and campaign visits from the major party campaigns than the 42 million eligible voters in those 27 smallest states combined.
The 12 smallest states are totally ignored in presidential elections. These states are not ignored because they are small, but because they are not closely divided “battleground” states.
Now with state-by-state winner-take-all laws (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), presidential elections ignore 12 of the 13 lowest population states (3-4 electoral votes), that are non-competitive in presidential elections. 6 regularly vote Republican (AK, ID, MT, WY, ND, and SD), and 6 regularly vote Democratic (RI, DE, HI, VT, ME, and DC) in presidential elections.
Similarly, the 25 smallest states have been almost equally noncompetitive. They voted Republican or Democratic 12-13 in 2008 and 2012.
Voters in states, of all sizes, that are reliably red or blue don’t matter. Candidates ignore those states and the issues they care about most.
Amending the Constitution does not require a Constitutional convention. None of the amendments have been passed that way.
I was using the old slippery slope argument, which is ironically a slippery slope.
Now we need to support the “Yes On National Popular Vote” campaign in Colorado, and vote for and urge state legislators in states with the 74 more electoral votes needed, to enact the National Popular Vote bill for the 2024 election.
The bill is 73% of the way to guaranteeing the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country. The bill changes state winner-take-all laws (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), without changing anything in the Constitution, using the built-in method that the Constitution provides for states to make changes.
It requires enacting states with 270 electoral votes to award their electoral votes to the winner of the most national popular votes.
All voters would be valued equally in presidential elections, no matter where they live.
Sounds good to me. Thank you for the info.
The argument was between the the populous states of Mass., New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia against the smaller states of Rhode Island, Vermont, ,New Hampshire, Delaware, Connecticut, and Georgia. Only one of those was a slave state.
Slavery had nothing to do with the electoral college decision. It was all in the numbers.