So I just got back from the Midwest Political Science Association meetings in Chicago this past weekend, and I was pleasantly embarrassed to learn something about the Electoral College from The New Yorker’s Hendrick Hertzberg during a Friday morning panel about the presidential race that also included NBC’s Chuck Todd and Salon’s incomparable Walter Shapiro: Namely, that the Founders intended the College to effectively be the nominating vehicle, presuming that wide open elections in that pre-party era would produce a bunch of regional candidates, none of whom were able to reach the sufficient, majority threshold, thereby throwing elections to the U.S. House for a proper (general election stage-ish) decision.
Ironically, the 1796 elections brought with it both the first party-style national election—a development that most years since meant that one of the two major parties’ nominees would secure a majority of electors—and also the first election thrown to the House, where John Adams beat his then-rival and eventual lifetime ally, Thomas Jefferson. It’s just another reason we need a solution like the National Popular Vote reform, which I wrote about in my most recent column for the Baltimore Sun.
–Tom Schaller
