Synopses & Reviews
With every presidential election, Americans puzzle over the peculiar mechanism of the Electoral College. The author of Pulitzer finalist The Right to Vote explains the endurance of an institution widely regarded as a problem for more than 200 years.
Every four years, millions of Americans wonder why they choose their presidents through the Electoral College, an arcane institution that permits the loser of the popular vote to become president and narrows campaigns to swing states. Most Americans would prefer a national popular vote, and Congress has attempted on many occasions to alter or scuttle the Electoral College. Several of these efforts — one as recently as 1970 — came very close to winning approval. Yet this controversial system remains.
Alexander Keyssar explains its persistence. After tracing the Electoral College's tangled origins at the Constitutional Convention, he explores the efforts from 1800 to 2019 to abolish or significantly reform it, showing why each has thus far failed. Reasons include the tendency of political parties to elevate partisan advantage above democratic values, the difficulty of passing constitutional amendments, and, especially, the impulse to preserve white supremacy in the South, which led to its prolonged backing of the Electoral College. The most common explanation — that small states have blocked reform for fear of losing influence — has only occasionally been true.
Keyssar examines why reform of the Electoral College has received so little attention from Congress for the last forty years, as well as alternatives to congressional action such as the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact and state efforts to eliminate winner-take-all. In analyzing the reasons for past failures while showing how close the nation has come to abolishing the institution, Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College? offers encouragement to those hoping to produce change in the twenty-first century.
Review
"A rigorous historian of the institution." Steve Coll, New Yorker
Review
"[Keyssar's] telling, artfully balancing broad themes and specific anecdotes, is both readable and valuable; knowing how we got here is a useful prerequisite to charting how to get where we want to be." Daniel B. Moskowitz, Washington Times
Review
"Our foremost historian of voting and elections explains the frustrating experiences the nation has had in attempting to eliminate — or even amend — the antiquated Electoral College. While the procedures of self-government should be rational, or at least ones Americans want, they are anything but, and Keyssar provides a nuanced and eventful narrative as to why. The result is a much-needed book that fills a gap in our national self-understanding, which surely is the first step to making any progress in rectifying the situation." Edward B. Foley, author of Presidential Elections and Majority Rule
Review
"Keyssar asks a simple question that seems to have an equally simple answer — the small states would never allow it, so why even think about it? Being the careful historian he is, he offers a complex analysis proving that our presidential election system has long been controversial; that serious efforts, now forgotten, were made to alter it; and that the case for its amendment remains as compelling, but also challenging, as ever. At this critical moment in our history, he brilliantly engages one of the most vexing problems in our working Constitution." Jack N. Rakove, author of The Annotated U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence
Review
"A masterpiece. Keyssar shows us that America's Electoral College has ever drifted on turbulent waters, surviving various near-misses at reform both local and national. He leaves readers with the humbling reminder that popular sovereignty can ossify the rules of election, even as he lays bare the political vulnerabilities of the Electoral College and the real possibilities for change." Daniel Carpenter, author of Reputation and Power
Review
"This is a powerful work twice over. Its contributions to the debate over the Electoral College's effects on our politics are profound. No less important, though, are the fascinating accounts of the changing rules governing presidential elections since the nation's founding, a turbulent and largely unknown history. Keyssar's lucid scholarship does justice to the past while it forcefully informs the present." Sean Wilentz, author of No Property in Man
Review
"America's greatest historian of democracy now offers an extraordinary history of the most bizarre aspect of our representative democracy — the electoral college. In a clear and complete account of this anomaly's origins and how it has survived, we can see the outlines for how it might be replaced, or at least improved upon. This is a brilliant contribution to a critical current debate, just in time to help guide effective reform." Lawrence Lessig, author of They Don't Represent Us
Review
"Keyssar, our great narrator of the American right to vote, is a national treasure who keeps giving us the history we need right when we need it. In this thrilling achievement, he tells the history of the Electoral College — how it has repeatedly eroded democratic values and how we might come to replace it in the twenty-first century. This is a dazzling contribution not just to American history but to the American future." Congressman Jamie Raskin (Maryland)
Review
"To fully explain how difficult the Electoral College is to dislodge, Keyssar chronicles more than two centuries of near-constant disputation and battle." Lee Drutman, Washington Monthly
Synopsis
A New Statesman Book of the Year
With every presidential election, Americans puzzle over the peculiar mechanism of the Electoral College. The author of the Pulitzer finalist The Right to Vote explains the enduring problem of this controversial institution.
Every four years, millions of Americans wonder why they choose their presidents through the Electoral College, an arcane institution that permits the loser of the popular vote to become president and narrows campaigns to swing states. Most Americans have long preferred a national popular vote, and Congress has attempted on many occasions to alter or scuttle the Electoral College. Several of these efforts--one as recently as 1970--came very close to winning approval. Yet this controversial system remains.
Alexander Keyssar explains its persistence. After tracing the Electoral College's tangled origins at the Constitutional Convention, he explores the efforts from 1800 to 2020 to abolish or significantly reform it, showing why each has failed. Reasons include the complexity of the electoral system's design, the tendency of political parties to elevate partisan advantage above democratic values, the difficulty of passing constitutional amendments, and, importantly, the South's prolonged backing of the Electoral College, grounded in its desire to preserve white supremacy in the region. The commonly voiced explanation that small states have blocked reform for fear of losing influence proves to have been true only occasionally.
Keyssar examines why reform of the Electoral College has received so little attention from Congress for the last forty years, and considers alternatives to congressional action such as the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact and state efforts to eliminate winner-take-all. In analyzing the reasons for past failures while showing how close the nation has come to abolishing the institution, Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College? offers encouragement to those hoping to produce change in the twenty-first century.
About the Author
Alexander Keyssar is the author of numerous books including The Right to Vote, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and won the Beveridge Award from the American Historical Association. He is Matthew W. Stirling, Jr., Professor of History and Social Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.