What (if Anything) Should Be Done About Improving the System of Electing a President? (Part 2)

What (if Anything) Should Be Done About Improving the System of Electing a President? (Part 2)The Electoral College emphatically does not represent the best of all possible worlds, say these panelists, providing often scathing and nuanced responses to the EC advocates who precede them in this conference.Akhil Amar favors the direct national election because it “best expresses the idea of one person, one vote.” One argument in favor of the EC, though: inertia, which essentially expresses that “the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.” He takes issue with those who would preserve the EC because it exclusively sustains federalism. Direct national elections, he says, wouldn’t eliminate the Senate or the need for federal oversight of voting. Why fear a direct vote, he asks, when plenty of big states like California and Texas directly elect an executive “who looks like a mini-president…and it works just fine.”The “origins of the Electoral College are quite tainted and not really that understood,” says Vikram Amar, and the more he listens to arguments for retaining the institution, “the more laughable some of them are.” The EC doesn’t really promote “the deepest vision of federalism,” as its proponents suggest, nor does it defeat regionalism, since as few as 11 states could dictate the outcome of an election. He also derides advocates who support the EC because it can “exaggerate the margin of victory to create legitimacy.”

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What (if Anything) Should Be Done About Improving the System of Electing a President? (Part 2)

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