The Electoral College (Throwback)

Summary

Throughline: The Electoral College (Throwback) – Detailed Summary

Introduction: The Power and Peril of Voting

In the opening segments of the episode, hosts Rand Abdelfatah and Ramtin Arablouie delve into the fundamental significance of the right to vote in the United States. They emphasize that voting is not merely a civic duty but a powerful mechanism that shapes the nation's destiny. Rand Abdelfatah sets the stage by challenging the common perception of American democracy, stating:

“Most of us in the United States are raised to believe that our country is the most democratic on the planet... But we found that when you start to investigate these beliefs through the lens of history, things start to get weird. Assumptions begin to crumble.”
(01:10)

This exploration leads them to scrutinize the Electoral College, revealing its historical complexities and enduring influence on American politics.

Origins of the Electoral College: The 1787 Constitutional Convention

The episode traces the Electoral College's inception to the summer of 1787 in Philadelphia, where 55 white male delegates convened to draft the Constitution amidst the fledgling nation's fragility post-Revolutionary War. Rand Abdelfatah paints a vivid picture of the intense environment:

“If you know anything about summer in Philadelphia, you know that it's hot... But that wasn't the only reason they were sweating. They were also under a lot of pressure.”
(06:57)

Faced with the unprecedented challenge of creating a unified governance system without historical precedents, the delegates grappled with designing a method to elect the nation’s president.

The Three-Fifths Compromise: Slavery's Impact on Representation

A pivotal moment in the convention was the negotiation over how enslaved individuals would be counted for representation and taxation purposes. The Southern states, recognizing that a larger population count would yield more electoral votes and Congressional representation, pushed for enslaved people to be counted. Northern delegates opposed this, arguing it dehumanized enslaved individuals. The resolution was the infamous Three-Fifths Compromise:

“In order to pad their population numbers, Southern states wanted enslaved people in their states to count... But the Northern states were like, wait a minute.”
(16:00)

This compromise not only entrenched racial inequalities but also skewed political power in favor of slaveholding states, providing them with disproportionate influence in presidential elections.

The Election of 1800: Electoral College Failures and the 12th Amendment

The episode highlights the tumultuous 1800 presidential election between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, both Democratic-Republicans, which resulted in a tie within the Electoral College. This deadlock exposed the system's flaws, as the House of Representatives, dominated by Federalists, had to intervene. Alexander Hamilton's intervention ensured Jefferson's presidency, but the fiasco underscored the need for reform:

“If Congress chooses the president, there is no separation of powers. The possibilities of corruption are enormous. Let's not do this.” – Akhil Reid Amar
(10:05)

Consequently, the 12th Amendment was ratified, mandating separate votes for President and Vice President, thereby refining the Electoral College structure—referred to as Electoral College 2.0.

Sustained Southern Influence and Voter Suppression Post-Civil War

Following the Civil War and the abolition of slavery through the 13th Amendment, the Southern states continued to manipulate the Electoral College to maintain their political dominance. By suppressing Black voters, they inadvertently preserved their electoral advantage even after the Three-Fifths Compromise was nullified:

“Our system awards influence according to population, not according to participation. In this system, states are not at all penalized for engaging in voter suppression.” – Akhil Reid Amar
(35:18)

This period cemented the Electoral College's role in favoring regions that engaged in systemic voter disenfranchisement, shaping presidential outcomes well into the 20th century.

The 1968 Election and the Reignition of Electoral College Reform Efforts

The 1968 presidential election, marked by a three-way race among Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, and third-party candidate George Wallace, reignited debates over the Electoral College. Wallace's strong showing threatened to send the election to the House of Representatives, prompting a wave of bipartisan support for abolishing the Electoral College in favor of a national popular vote:

“In September of 1969, a constitutional amendment calling for ending the Electoral College and replacing it with the national popular vote is passed by the House of Representatives with about an 82% favorable vote...”
(42:12)

However, entrenched Southern opposition, led by segregationist senators like James Eastland, ultimately thwarted these efforts, maintaining the status quo.

Contemporary Perspectives: Arguments for and Against the Electoral College

Modern commentators offer diverse viewpoints on the Electoral College's efficacy. Akhil Reid Amar acknowledges potential benefits but criticizes its lack of transparency and foundational flaws:

“When I think about today... the Electoral College is not that [grounded in widely accepted principles].” – Akhil Reid Amar
(47:48)

Conversely, Alex Keyssar argues for maintaining the system due to practical concerns about national uniformity and unanticipated consequences of reforms:

“It's just the system that we have inertia. You try to change the system and they're going to be unanticipated consequences.” – Alex Keyssar
(45:21)

Rand Abdelfatah and Douglas emphasize the Electoral College's origins tied to preserving white supremacy, highlighting its ongoing role in undermining democratic ideals:

“Those who are tied to the traditions of a slaveholding past... they don't want to be changed.” – Douglas
(46:16)

Conclusion: The Electoral College's Enduring Legacy and the Call for Evolution

Throughline wraps up by reflecting on the Electoral College as a product of its time—crafted by flawed individuals under duress, embedding systemic inequities that persist today. Rand Abdelfatah invokes Thomas Jefferson's foresight, urging institutional evolution to align with contemporary values:

“As laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind... institutions must advance also, to keep pace with the times.” – Thomas Jefferson (quoted)
(48:43)

The episode underscores the necessity for ongoing dialogue and potential reform to ensure that the American electoral system truly embodies the principles of equality and democratic representation.

Notable Quotes with Attribution and Timestamps

• Rand Abdelfatah:
  “Most of us in the United States are raised to believe that our country is the most democratic on the planet... But we found that when you start to investigate these beliefs through the lens of history, things start to get weird. Assumptions begin to crumble.”
  (01:10)

• Akhil Reid Amar:
  “When Congress chooses the president, there is no separation of powers. The possibilities of corruption are enormous. Let's not do this.”
  (10:05)

• Carol Anderson (Emory University):
  “[...] the South wanted safeguards through the Constitution that would protect slaveholder power.”
  (20:22)

• Alexander Hamilton (historical quote):
  “It was equally desirable that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station...”
  (12:48)

• Rand Abdelfatah:
  “So even though we have multiple failed efforts to change some aspects of the Electoral College in the decades after the 1800 election, the status quo pretty much remained the same.”
  (32:15)

• Thomas Jefferson (historical quote):
  “Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind... As civilized society... to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”
  (48:43)

Conclusion

Throughline's exploration of the Electoral College unravels its historical roots, racial underpinnings, and the enduring debates surrounding its role in American democracy. By attributing significant quotes and providing contextual analysis, the episode offers a comprehensive understanding of how the Electoral College was designed, how it has functioned, and why it remains a contentious element of the U.S. political system.

Transcript

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[Douglas]

So we're talking about this right to vote, this power to vote.

[Mary Holland Davis]

If we didn't have this right to.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

Vote, they probably wouldn't be killing us.

[Akhil Reid Amar]

When a big landowner like George Washington offers you a rum Todd, it's a.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

Pret good way to make money to.

[Alex Keyssar]

Just sell your vote.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

You're going to be sure you cast a vote for George Washington.

[Douglas]

When we have an electorate where it's only sopranos singing, Douglas says the United.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

States now has a chance that gets.

[Douglas]

Harsh on the ears after a quick.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

Minute to create a republic.

[Douglas]

When we have an electorate with people.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

From all corners of the world that.

[Douglas]

Is made up of sopranos and altos.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

Of all colors, all religions and ethnicities.

[Douglas]

Baritones and basses and tenors, we get the richness of the sound.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

Most of us in the United States are raised to believe that our country is the most democratic on the planet, that the framers of the Constitution, in all their wisdom, created a perfect system that ensures citizens have a real say in who their leaders are, that voting is a right and part of our identity as Americans. But we found that when you start to investigate these beliefs through the lens of history, things start to get weird. Assumptions begin to crumble.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

But you also realize that even though our voting system can be quite flawed, it's also really important and a real privilege that carries with it real power. And this is especially true when it comes to the Electoral College.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

We've all been hearing a lot about the Electoral College. Obviously, this episode isn't about the headlines, though. It's about how the system actually works. Here's the rundown. Every four years, each state nominates a set of electors to cast their votes for the President of the United States. In the vast majority of states, it's a winner take all system. This means that if the Republican candidate, for example, wins the popular vote of a state, then all the electors of that state vote for that Republican candidate.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

How many electors does each state get? You take the number of House of Representative members and senators for that state, you add that up, and that's the number of electoral votes they get. Now remember, those numbers are mostly based on population. So Texas gets a lot more electoral votes than, say, Maryland.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

But this is also where things can get a little confusing, because to try and keep things fair, the system is also set up to be proportional so that big states like Texas don't get all the power just because they happen to have more people, thus leaving smaller states like Maryland out in the cold. So basically, smaller states get a bigger say with the Electoral College than they would in a direct popular vote. So instead of a popular direct vote, our system essentially creates a kind of mini Congress every four years that comes together to vote for president, and the candidate who gets the majority of electoral votes wins the election. Right now, the number a candidate needs to win is 270 electoral votes.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

But how did our country come to have this complicated system? How did it start, and why do.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

We still have it? I'm Rand Abdelfatah.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

I'm Ramtin Arab Louie, and you're listening.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

To Throughline from npr, where we go back in time to understand the present.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

Hi, this is Christopher Ogudu, and you're listening to True Line on npr. I love this show and you should love it, too.

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[Alex Keyssar]

Part 1 Electoral College One Point.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

In the summer of 1787, 55 white men representing nearly all the former American colonies of Great Britain gathered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The youngest among them was 26 and the oldest 81, they gathered there to figure out how to hold the fragile young country together. What they came up with was the founding document of the newly independent United States, the Constitution.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

If you know anything about summer in Philadelphia, you know that it's hot, really hot, especially if you're wearing a powdered wig and weirdly thick colonial garments, which most of the delegates would have been wearing. But that wasn't the only reason they were sweating. They were also under a lot of pressure. The American colonies had fought a horrific and bloody Revolutionary War. By 1787, things were still shaky. The newly independent nation needed some kind of binding document, and they needed it asap.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

And they weren't working with much. There were almost no examples from history for how to draft a set of rules that would govern a country with no monarchy.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

And here's the thing. They weren't going to sit around in humid rooms writing this document for a few months, sign it, and go back to their hometowns and chill. They were accountable. Whatever they came up with had to be approved.

[Alex Keyssar]

They are only drafting a proposal they can't announce and implement the Constitution. They're going to have to get it ratified by the states. This is Akhil Reid Amar.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

He's a professor at Yale University's law school and author of Law of the A Grand Tour of Our Constitutional Republic. Okay, so the states all have to approve the proposed Constitution.

[Alex Keyssar]

Now, that means we're going to need to get buy in from people in big states and from people in small states, people in the south, slave states, and people in the north free states.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

The American colonies had all evolved in completely different ways. They all had different interests, yet they all had a stake in the success of the Union. So it wasn't going to be easy to agree on anything, especially on how to elect the country's chief executive or president.

[Alex Keyssar]

The presidency is perhaps the hardest nut to crack at Philadelphia. And it is because it's the thing that looks different than anything the world has seen.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

That is not an overstatement. There had never ever been a position like president in world history.

[Akhil Reid Amar]

The default position as the convention began was that Congress would choose the president.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

In other words, the legislature would just straight up pick the president on behalf of the voters. Several delegations from states like New Jersey and Virginia proposed their own methods for doing this. And then they took the temperature of the room, tested the idea out with a straw poll.

[Akhil Reid Amar]

Each time after they would have a straw vote, they began to back off. And people would criticize it, say, this is not a good idea.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

This is Alex Keyssar and I'm a.

[Akhil Reid Amar]

Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School. And the name of my book is why do we still have the Electoral College? If Congress chooses the president, there is no separation of powers. The possibilities of corruption are enormous. Let's not do this. So then they would toss around other ideas.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

Other ideas, like maybe governors of each state could vote for the president, or a small appointed committee would select the president. These were quickly rejected. And then things got spicy. Someone proposed an idea that might seem obvious to us today. Each voter casts a ballot directly for the candidate they want. Whoever gets the most votes is president. A popular direct vote.

[Akhil Reid Amar]

James Madison, the foremost thinker behind the Constitution, favored that. That seemed to him, in theory, to have the fewest risks and the most possible benefits.

[Thomas Jefferson]

The people at large was the fittest in itself. It would be as likely as any that could be devised to produce an executive magistrate of distinguished character.

[Akhil Reid Amar]

There were a variety of objections. People thought that the country was simply too dispersed and most people could not be familiar with the possible candidates.

[Alex Keyssar]

Even if we think ordinary people are good, ordinary voters at picking members of the House of Representatives and good at picking their governors, that's because they know who's good in their locality, who's good in their state. But they might not know who's good halfway across the continent.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

In 1787, information moved slowly. The post office was just beginning, and it was difficult to really know politics beyond the local level. But okay, let's be real here. That sounds a bit like an excuse, right? Maybe you're thinking the framers of the Constitution, as mostly landowning white men, might have thought it was dangerous to allow a direct election system.

[Akhil Reid Amar]

I think that among the framers, there were numerous people who did distrust the people. There was unease about trusting things to people. At the same time, they felt that it should be a government of the people.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

As we'll see, the ideas behind the Constitution are riddled with contradictions.

[Akhil Reid Amar]

The word democracy, as we know in the late 18th century, was a word that had negative connotations. It had overtones of mob rule and chaos.

[Alexander Hamilton]

It was equally desirable that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

These are the words of Alexander Hamilton. He wasn't so excited about the idea of a direct popular vote.

[Alexander Hamilton]

It was also peculiarly desirable to afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder. This evil was not least to be dreaded in the election of a magistrate who was to have so important an agency in the administration of the government as the President of the United States.

[Akhil Reid Amar]

Yes, there is a distrust. My reading of the records is that distrust was not paramount, in part because the people were a circumscribed group. People did not mean everybody, did not mean every male, et cetera. It likely meant, although it varied by state, property owning, or at least tax paying, adult white males.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

So even though the Framers weren't fans of a direct popular vote, they did believe that people should choose their leaders through elections. They did believe in democracy. Yet according to Akhil Lamar, there was another major obstacle for the idea of people directly voting for president.

[Alex Keyssar]

In one word, slavery. The fundamental problem with direct election is the south will lose every time because a huge percentage of its population are enslaved people. And obviously slaves won't be voting.

[Sponsor Message]

The right of suffrage was much more.

[Thomas Jefferson]

Diffusive in the Northern than the Southern states. And the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of Negroes.

[Alex Keyssar]

And I'm not making that up. That's what James Madison from Virginia says behind closed doors at Philadelphia. And Madison says, oh, I'm in theory, I'm in favor of direct election. You know, there's just one problem. I've been doing the math, and if we do it this way, the people in the south will lose every time.

[Akhil Reid Amar]

Madison says a national popular vote would disadvantage my region of the country.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

The way he saw it, a direct popular vote would threaten the economic interests of southern slaveholding states because, well, a big chunk of their population were enslaved people who weren't allowed to vote and didn't count towards their population numbers. And since they had a smaller number of eligible voters, basically landowning white men, than Northern states, they'd pretty much always be at the mercy of those free states. And this is where the three fifths compromise comes in.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

Here's how it worked. In order to pad their population numbers, Southern states wanted enslaved people in their states to count. Why? Well, because the bigger your state's population, the more money you'd receive from the federal budget and the more representation you'd get in Congress. More people, more money, more power.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

But the Northern states were like, wait a minute. So you don't consider enslaved people to be humans because you treat them like chattel, but you want to count them towards your populations? That isn't going to work for us.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

And the Southern states were basically like, well, we don't give a damn what works for you? If you want us to be part of the Union, we're going to need our enslaved people counted.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

And so after a series of debates, Northern delegates reached a deal with Southerners. Enslaved people would count as three fifths of a human being. Towards the population numbers.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

I know, it's really disturbing. Okay, so back to the Constitutional Convention. Many delegates from slaveholding states wanted that racialized population calculus carried over to electing the president direct. Direct popular vote wasn't going to work.

[Akhil Reid Amar]

They went around and around through the summer. That's the basic story. And they could not agree.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

And on top of all that, the convention was running out of time. So what did the delegates do when things got stressful and difficult? They took a break.

[Akhil Reid Amar]

So what happened, you know, in effect, was that the convention decided on taking a vacation for a week and appointing a committee called the Committee on Postponed Parts to deal with various things they had not been able to resolve.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

So they basically just handed off the work of ironing out the details to an even smaller group of delegates.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

And they came up with a plan they thought could win enough support from both Northern and Southern states. They presented it, and after a few modifications, it was accepted by the convention. They didn't give it a name at the time, but it would come to be called the Electoral College. Akhil calls it Electoral College version 1.0.

[Alex Keyssar]

That's the original system.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

And what it basically said was we're.

[Alex Keyssar]

Not going to elect a president by direct popular vote. Instead, each state will be assigned a number of electricity electors based on the number of seats that it has in the House of Representatives, plus the number of seats it has in the Senate. What are electors? They're people that are picked to select the present. How are the electors themselves picked? Any way the state legislature chooses.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

Any way the state legislature chooses. This kind of ambiguity would come back to haunt the system later. Anyway. By the end of 1788, the Constitution was ratified. They'd done it. They'd created the world's first complete, codified national constitution.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

But wait, let's stop and ask a few questions. When the framers made the deal to include the Electoral College in the Constitution, who ultimately benefited the most? Well, the answer is both states with small populations and the slave owning states. As a result, a state like Virginia with a huge slave population gained advantages. Seven of the first 12American presidents were from Virginia.

[Alex Keyssar]

The system is basically one that's going to give the slaveholding South a leg up and especially a big slaveholding state.

[Douglas]

The Electoral College is really about the fears of the Southern states at the founding of this nation that the larger Northern states would dominate.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

This is Carol Anderson.

[Douglas]

She's a professor of African American studies at Emory University.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

Carol says that ultimately what the south wanted was safeguards.

[Douglas]

They wanted guardrails all the way through the Constitution that would protect slaveholder power.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

The Electoral College was a compromise. Like many things in the Constitution, it was created by imperfect people in a very imperfect situation. And from the records they left, it's pretty clear that most of the delegates at the Constitutional Convention thought it was just the best they could do under the circumstance.

[Alexander Hamilton]

The most plausible of these who has appeared in print has even deigned to admit that the election of the President is pretty well guarded. I venture somewhat further and hesitate not to affirm that if the manner of it be not perfect, it is at least excellent.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

There are two pieces of evidence right there in the Constitution that confirm this. First, they included an amendment process so that the Constitution could be updated as needed. And second, they actually expected that the Electoral College would fail sometimes, as in no one candidate would get a majority of votes. So they created a failsafe where the House of Representatives would vote for President. If that happened.

[Akhil Reid Amar]

We tend to think of it as a kind of minor add on, but it was a central part of the architecture that they created. And many of the framers believed that the President would not often be chosen by the Electoral College.

[Alex Keyssar]

I do think that the aversion that emerges from Philadelphia and is ratified up and down the continent is understood as 1.0.

[Akhil Reid Amar]

Even as they concluded the Constitutional Convention, they were alluding to the fact that this was an experiment and that they did put an amendment process into the Constitution, and thus what they had decided to do could be improved upon if necessary.

[Douglas]

What makes the document so fascinating is that it becomes part of the language of aspiration. So we know what the United States is. But in the Declaration of Independence, then in the Constitution, you have the aspirations for what the United States could be. We hold these truths to be self evident. Well, if it's self evident, son, here I am.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

Today many people treat the Constitution and the Electoral College almost like scripture, like the original ideas contained in it are timeless, perfect for any era. But it's pretty clear that even the men who wrote it didn't see it that way. They had blind spots.

[Akhil Reid Amar]

And a number of the framers, including James Madison, expressed serious regrets about what they had done, proposed changing it in a number of ways. And Madison himself commented that the presidential election system had been to some extent the product of haste and fatigue.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

And these are the limits of being a prisoner of the moment. The reality was that George Washington would not be president forever and the United States would continue to grow. It would start to become a player in world events, and so elections would become more complicated and more dangerous. And the prediction of some framers that the Electoral College may not always work turned out to be prescient. Hi friends, this is Jessica Gallegos from Phoenix, Arizona, and you're listening to Throughline from npr.

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[Alex Keyssar]

Part 2 Things Fall Apart.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

Not long after the Constitution was written, the US developed political parties. It's important to know that in 1800, the US had two major political parties, the Federalist Party and the Democratic Republican Party.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

And they had some major differences. Let's start with the Federalists. They dominated American politics. President John Adams, America's second president, was a Federalist. And the Federalist Party, concentrated in the north, was the home of most slavery abolitionists. The Democratic Republicans, the party of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, both lifelong slave owners, were primarily based in the South. Also, the country was on the brink of war with France, and both parties were calling each other traitors. This is from a Federalist Party election pamphlet. Let these men get into power, put the reins of government into their hands, and what security have you against the occurrence of the scenes which have rendered France a cemetery, and moisture moistened her soil with the tears and blood of her inhabitants and let's just say the Democratic Republicans were not very fond of the Federalist government either. Here are some fighting words from Thomas Jefferson.

[Thomas Jefferson]

Our general government has, in the rapid course of nine or ten years, become more arbitrary and has swallowed more of the public liberty than even that of England.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

So with the country in the midst of an undeclared war with France and the political parties in an all out battle, what happens? The 1800 presidential election.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

It was a rematch of the 1796 race between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Both sides tried to gain an advantage by messing with the internal election process of different states. Accusations and slander were fired back and forth from both sides. Still, they managed to have the election. And In December of 1800, the Electoral College met to cast their votes. But as soon as the votes were tallied up, there was a problem.

[Akhil Reid Amar]

Every elector cast two electoral votes. And the design of the original Constitution was whoever got the most electoral votes became President. And whoever got the second most electoral votes became vice president.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

So in 1800, the Democratic Republican party had run Thomas Jefferson for President and Aaron Burr for Vice President. Their ticket won more electoral votes than the Federalist Party.

[Akhil Reid Amar]

But Burr and Jefferson, they each have majorities of the electoral votes.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

It's a tie. Each of them receives 73 votes.

[Akhil Reid Amar]

And that produces a truly anomalous situation. They both have majority, so it goes to the House of Representatives.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

And just to complicate things further, the House of Representatives was dominated by the Federalist Party, whose candidate John Adams had just lost the election.

[Akhil Reid Amar]

In effect, the decision about which Republican would become President was in the hands of the Federalists.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

The Federalists had to choose a president from the party they just spent the previous year basically calling traitors, which did.

[Akhil Reid Amar]

Not seem like a very good outcome of an institutional design.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

So then, which poison to pick, Jefferson or Burr? And in a move that would impact American history as well as the box office sales of a certain future musical, Alexander Hamilton, a Federalist Party leader from New York, successfully lobbied his party to choose Thomas Jefferson.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

Everyone realized that without a rule change to make electors select president and Vice president separately, this situation could happen over and over again.

[Alex Keyssar]

1.0 failed. And that's why it needed a software patch. And we get Electoral college to called the 12th Amendment. And that's actually the Electoral college system that we have today.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

So the 1.0 version of the Electoral College didn't require electors to cast separate votes for president and Vice President. It was kind of a huge omission. So after the fiasco of the 1800 election, the 12th Amendment was passed. It required each member of the Electoral College to specifically put in one vote for President and another for Vice President. This became Electoral College 2.0.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

At this point in the story, it might be tempting to say, hey, things worked as they should have. The Electoral College ran into a snag, and then it was amended. See, the system works okay on the surface that is true, but it does leave out one major detail.

[Alex Keyssar]

In 1800, John Adams loses because Thomas Jefferson is getting extra credit, extra electoral votes because of slavery in 3/5.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

Slavery in 3/5. In other words, if the 3/5 compromise wasn't a thing, then the Federalist Party, which, remember, had a lot of slavery abolitionists as members, would have won the election. The Southern states benefited greatly from the Electoral College. It gave them a strategic advantage.

[Alex Keyssar]

And the sentence that appeared again and again in Newspapers is, Mr. Jefferson is riding into the executive Mansion, what we would call the White House, on the backs of his slaves.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

So according to akhil, when the 12th Amendment was moving through Congress, many Northern politicians advocated for just getting rid of the Electoral College altogether.

[Alex Keyssar]

Yankees say, as long as we're changing the system, let's do direct election. And Southerners say, no thank you. We like the system the way it is. Thank, thank you. And that's when America owns the pro slavery and can't deny the pro slavery aspects of the Electoral College when they see it in operation. Fix other glitches and don't fix this one.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

And even though there would be several failed efforts to change some aspects of the Electoral College in the decades after the 1800 election, the status quo pretty much remained the same. And this continued to work in the favor of Southern states all the way until the time of Abraham Lincoln.

[Alex Keyssar]

The presidency is dominated by plantation owning Southern slaveholders.

[Douglas]

The south was very clear, we don't get what we want. Want. You're on your own. You won't have a United States. They're holding the United States as this symbol, hostage to slave power.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

The tensions between the north and the south come to a head in the Civil War. And towards the end of the war, when it was clear the south would lose, the US Congress passed the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery and effectively ending the 3/5 compromise.

[Alex Keyssar]

So the 13th Amendment is epic. And you might think that the people who did that would justifiably say, you know, we deserve a pat on the back, mission accomplished. And then there's this moment. It's the oh crap moment, because now we've got rid of slavery. So what happens to three fifths, it becomes five fifths, because now, technically everyone is free. Oh, so actually the south is going to have more seats in the Electoral College than ever before, more seats in the House of Representatives, and they're not letting their people vote.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

Besides the brief period of Reconstruction, Southern states systematically kept black citizens from voting.

[Akhil Reid Amar]

Our system awards influence according to population, not according to participation. In this system, states are not at all penalized for engaging in voter suppression.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

So by suppressing black voters, the Southern states actually got a better deal when the three fifths compromise ended. And this impacted the presidency through the rest of the 1800s and even into the 20th century.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

The electoral College was from the beginning, a political deal. A deal that was designed to allow states with small populations to have more of a say in presidential elections and to ensure that Southern slaveholding states felt protected. Yet today, many people argue that the dynamics of the Electoral College have changed, that actually the Electoral College is accomplishing its goal of protecting small states. But according to Akhil Amar, that's not a completely accurate way of looking at it.

[Alex Keyssar]

America is not dividing big state versus small state. America today and for all of history has divided three ways, basically north against south, cities against rural areas, and coastal areas against the interior.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

And those dynamics will come back to haunt the Electoral College again, more than a hundred years after the end of the Civil War.

[Mary Holland Davis]

Hi, my name is Mary Holland Davis. I'm from Etico, New York, and you're listening to Throughline.

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[Rand Abdelfatah]

Part 3.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

So close so Far in the decades after the Civil War and well into the 20th century, hundreds of amendments were proposed to the Constitution to change the Electoral College. None of them really got that close to being passed. That is, until the presidential elections of 1968. There were three candidates in the race. Republican, former Vice President Richard Nixon, Democrat and current Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and a third party candidate named George Wallace.

[Mary Holland Davis]

In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny. And I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.

[Alex Keyssar]

Remember all the other things that are happening.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

In the 1960s, there were sweeping changes happening everywhere in the country.

[Alex Keyssar]

We're getting rid of poll tax disenfranchisement and we're adopting the Voting Rights act of 1965.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

Washington, D.C. a mostly black city, joined the Electoral College and for the first time got to have a say in choosing the President and the Civil Rights.

[Alex Keyssar]

Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

Act of 1968 and the Immigration Rights act of 1965.

[Alex Keyssar]

So America is in the middle of a second reconstruction.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

And in the middle of all of this emerged George Wallace, that third party candidate who you heard a second ago say segregation. Now, as you might have guessed, Wallace was a racist. His campaign centered on stirring up the fears of white voters all over the country.

[Mary Holland Davis]

The Congress of our country succumb to the blackmail of a group of anarchists in the streets.

[Akhil Reid Amar]

George Wallace mounts a campaign for president, first within the Democratic Party and then as a third party candidate. It looks like there is a very good chance that he will win enough states in order to prevent either Nixon or Humphrey from getting an Electoral College majority.

[Mary Holland Davis]

And I say to you that when the leaders of both national parties will succumb to a group of anarchists in the street, then I say neither one of these parties are fit to lead the American people. During the next ensuing four years.

[Akhil Reid Amar]

Wallace will end up either in the Electoral College or in Congress being the kingmaker. And in that role, he would basically trade the votes he controlled for a commitment to go slow or reverse things on civil rights and voting rights.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

Neither Republicans nor Democrats wanted that to happen. And they probably imagined a future where a third party candidate like George Wallace could use the Electoral College system to wield this kind of power again and again.

[Mary Holland Davis]

Mr. Nixon is appearing in the doorway now, preceded by members of his staff and members of the Secret Service. At almost midday Eastern Time, NBC News projected Richard Nixon, the 37th president of the United States, when it became evident he had carried Illinois. Final returns may well reveal that indeed it was Mayor Richard Bailey's Illinois and Mayor Richard Dale, Chicago, which averted a deadlock and a political constitutional crisis of incredible proportions.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

So the election happens, and the political establishment's worst fears didn't come to pass. George Wallace didn't end up with enough electoral votes to send the presidential election to Congress to decide. Nixon won the Electoral College decisively, but George Wallace's candidacy and the tight popular vote were enough to push Congress to consider an amendment to the Constitution that would essentially end the Electoral College.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

The momentum started to grow. The amendment gained bipartisan support, and a diverse list of organizations also started supporting it.

[Akhil Reid Amar]

The United Auto Workers and the AFL CIO end up endorsing a national popular vote, and so does the American Bar association and the U.S. chamber of Commerce.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

Even President Nixon, albeit reluctantly, said he supported the amendment.

[Akhil Reid Amar]

And in an extraordinary development, In September of 1969, a constitutional amendment calling for ending the Electoral College and replacing it with the national popular vote is passed by the House of Representatives with about an 82% favorable vote, far above the 2/3 that's needed for our constitutional amendment.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

It moved through the House and to the Senate, where it still had a lot of momentum, but then it hit a wall.

[Akhil Reid Amar]

It is stalled for a year. A big racist wall by political events, all of which are linked to tensions about race and white supremacy.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

Southern states are once again concerned that without an Electoral College, they will lose power.

[Akhil Reid Amar]

The chair of the Judiciary Committee in the Senate is James Eastland, who was a Mississippi planter and an ardent and determined and committed segregationist.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

He was a Southern Democrat.

[Akhil Reid Amar]

And I think one has to understand, too, that it was an article of faith that the Electoral College was their last bulwark against predations of the north and the civil rights movement, that the Electoral College gave them a structure and influence in the presidential elections without which they would not be able to stop the liberalizing forces of the civil rights movement.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

The bill met delay after delay in the Senate, and according to Alex Keyssar.

[Akhil Reid Amar]

Eventually led by Southern senators, but helped by some very conservative Midwestern Republicans, the proposal is defeated by a filibuster. The advocates of Electoral College reform fall short of being able to break the filibuster.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

And that's where we are today. We still use Electoral College 2.0, the 12th Amendment version, the version passed after the 1800 election, the version where each elector has to vote for both president and vice president separately. But why?

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

Well, Akhil Amar says there are actually some good reasons to keep the Electoral College.

[Alex Keyssar]

It's just the system that we have inertia. You try to change the system and they're going to be unanticipated consequences. What are they going to be? We don't know precisely because they're unanticipated. Every reform will create some of its.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

Own issues, issues that we don't tend to think about because of the Electoral College.

[Alex Keyssar]

I'll give you one illustration of an issue it creates. If we have direct election we're going to have to have a national system of uniformity for voting. So suppose California says we want to let 17 year olds vote so there will be more Californians voting in the system. Well, Texas says, oh, well, if you're going to have more Californians voting, we want to have a bigger clout in the system. So we're going to let 16 year olds vote. We're going to have to have a national apparatus to monitor all of this.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

And then there's the problem of whether Americans trust the federal government to run an election in this way.

[Alex Keyssar]

Who's going to be in charge of all of this? Because if it's going to be an incumbent president in charge of a national election, does that make you nervous? The current system, actually, in a whole bunch of states, it's actually the party that doesn't control the presidency that's in charge of a local election, let's say in Pennsylvania. So. So there are going to be issues. If you think we should scrap the current system, and I acknowledge that. Here's my best argument for why we should have reform. Equality. One person, one vote. Each person's vote should count the same. Whether it's male or female, black or white, Jew or gentile, gay or straight, northern or southern, coastal or interior. Every vote should count the same as every other vote. One person, one vote is a powerful affirmation of equality.

[Douglas]

I would say that the reason that we still have it is because those who are tied to the traditions of a slaveholding past, to the traditions of the inordinate power of white supremacy, and that couch this in the veneration of a Constitution, that they don't want to be changed. That's why we still have it. It cloaks it in the language of patriotism and democracy, when in fact what it does is it undermines it.

[Akhil Reid Amar]

When I think about today, when I think about our living in an era of very controversial, contentious politics and serious partisan and social conflict, that we need to have an electoral system that is grounded in very widely accepted principles and that is transparent in its grounding and in its operation. And the Electoral College is not that.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

The framers of our Constitution created a system that was most politically salient in a much different time. They were limited by their own shortcomings and context. They were flawed men who created a flawed election system.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

If we go by the words of one of those flawed men who created it, Thomas Jefferson, it might be time for a change.

[Thomas Jefferson]

I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untrue changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be born with, because when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered, and manners and opinions change with a change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

That's it for this week's show. I'm Rund Abdelfatah.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

I'm Ramtin Arablouei, and you've been listening to Throughline from npr.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

This episode was produced by me and.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

Me and Jamie York, Lawrence Wu, Laine.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

Kaplan Levinson, Julie K, Victoria Whitley Berry. Fact checking for this episode was done by Kevin Voelkel.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

Thanks also to Camille Smiley, Beth Donovan and Anya Grundmann. And a special thank you to Austin Horn, Jamie York, Connor McCurry, Jess Berry, Dylan Hardy Dawson and Travis Lux for their voiceover work.

[Rand Abdelfatah]

Our music was composed by Ramtin and his band Drop Electric, which includes Naveed.

[Ramtin Arab Louie]

Marvi, Sho Fujiwara, Anya Mizani. If you have an idea or like something you heard on the show, please write [e-mail] thanks for listening.

[Jessica Gallegos]

This message comes from NPR sponsor Shopify, the global commerce platform that helps you sell and show up exactly the way you want to customize your online store to your style. Sign up for a $1 per month trial [e-mail] NPR this message comes from.

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