Can Anything Dislodge the Electoral College?

Can Anything Dislodge the Electoral College?
AP Photo/Zach Gibson

Of all the institutions in American politics, the Electoral College is surely the strangest. It never worked as its designers intended, and for more than 200 years, generations of aspiring reformers have lambasted its distortions and mounted heroic campaigns to replace it. And yet it still stands, only slightly modified, in all its Rube Goldberg curiosity. Which begs the obvious question that titles the Harvard historian Alexander Keyssar’s new book, Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?

The short answer is that the constitution is really hard to amend, and virtually impossible when more than a third of senators or representatives think their states would do worse under new rules. And this has always been the case, for reasons ranging from preserving partisan advantages to preventing racial integration. As a result, our 18th-century peculiarity persists.

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