Prospects for the Electoral College after Election 2000.

Electoral College ... is the very model of up-to-date constitutional flexibility. --Martin Diamond(1) impetus for abolishing the electoral college is as strong as it is simple. No sane electoral system awards victory to second place. --Julian E. Davis(2) Through all the startling twists and turns taken by Election 2000, one thing was agreed upon by all: this election was historic. election prompted the longest period of post-election limbo without a president-elect since the election of 1876; the only move by a state legislature to declare its own slate of electors since the election of 1876; and the only entry of the Supreme Court into a presidential election our history, if one does not count the inclusion of five Supreme Court justices on the Electoral Commission that decided the election of 1876. So, maybe it's not a bad record for an electoral system when more than a century passes without any disputed elections rending the fabric of our nation's politics. On the other hand, would anyone like to see a replay of Election 2000 any time soon? It seems likely that the 2000 election will prompt renewed efforts to abolish the electoral college. It seems equally likely that such efforts will fail for the usual reasons--although some kind of electoral college reform may be possible. Consider these op-ed column titles from the post-election period: Scrap This System, No--the System Worked, The Electoral College--Unfair from Day One, Did You Expect: Framers Were Politicians, Too, and The Electoral College: What's the Fix? Take Your Pick.(3) Proposed amendments to abolish the electoral college and replace it with the direct election of the president followed the close elections of 1968 and 1976. A joint resolution for a constitutional amendment to eliminate the electoral college and replace it with a popular vote requiring a 40% plurality or a runoff between the top two candidates is already before Congress.(4) Ideas for reform of the electoral college center on replacing the winner-take-all system that now exists most with some form of district or proportional representation of the popular vote. How did the electoral college come into being? What role has it played disputed elections the past? What are the perceived strengths and weaknesses of the system? And, finally, what kind of legitimacy can a new president hope to wrest from an election where the popular and electoral votes diverge but remain so close that a fierce partisan battle ensues--as it did 1876 and again the year 2000? Origin of the Electoral College question of how to choose the president raised such a thorny problem for the Constitutional Convention that a of 11--with one delegate from each state present--was created to deal with it. James Wilson of Pennsylvania called the question in truth, the most difficult of all on which we have had to decide.(5) James Madison of Virginia took the lead as the Committee of 11 considered three major alternatives for selecting the president: (1) vote by Congress, (2) vote by the state legislatures, and (3) direct popular election. Committee rejected vote by Congress as a threat to the independence of the executive branch of government. Likewise, vote by the state legislatures posed a problem for the federal government, as it might weaken the national leader at the expense of the states. According to constitutional scholar Martin Diamond, direct election was favored by Madison, Wilson, and Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania. As a matter of fact, their own first choice was for a straight national popular vote; Wilson introduced that idea, and Madison and Morris endorsed it. But when the states righters vehemently rejected it, Wilson, Madison and Morris settled on the device of popularly elected electors.(6) electoral college devised by the Committee solved the problem of choosing a president by employing the congressional formula for state representation already arrived at by the Constitutional Convention, that is, by assigning each state as many electoral votes as it had representatives Congress. …