August 20, 2025 • 47 mins
The U.S. Constitution has inspired countless countries to adopt democracy, but NONE have adopted the electoral college. What's up with that? Turns out, if American's National Parks are "the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst," as author Wallace Stegner wrote, then the electoral college might be America's worst idea.
To figure out if the electoral college is trash, and to break down the origins, pros, cons and future of this unique electoral body, host Bob Crawford called on Peter Sagal. He's not just host of a game show on NPR (shoutout to WBEZ) and an avid marathoner. He's also host of the PBS show CONSTITUTION USA.
What's in this episode:
Bob and Peter unpack the history and ongoing relevance of the Electoral College, including its origins in balancing slavery, state power, and the popular vote. The conversation also touches on gerrymandering, the influence of political parties, and the challenges of achieving national unity in a polarized political climate.
GUEST: Peter Sagal, host of Wait, Wait ... Don't Tell Me! and CONSTITUTION USA
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
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get the answers.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Leave a message.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Hey, there, American History Hotliners. Bob Crawford here, thrilled to
be joining you again for another episode of American History Hotline,
the show where you asked the questions and I get
you the answers. And the best way to get us
a question is to record a video or a voice
memo on your phone and email it to American History
(00:31):
Hotline at gmail dot com. That's Americanhistoryhotline at gmail dot com.
All right, enough of a preamble, let's get to today's question.
It's a great one, and with a good question, a
question this good, we had to bring in the big
guns here to help me answer it is. And I'm
(00:52):
gonna say this, this man is an institution. Peter Segel,
host of MPR's Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me and the
PBS show So Constitution USA.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Hey, and I want to say nice little you know
set up there by using preamble there in your introduction,
got us in the constitutional mood.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
This show has great writers.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
We're all dependent on them.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Okay, Peter, let's get to the show. Of course, it's
just an honor to have you today. Here's the question
we were hoping you could help us answer.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
Hi, Bob, this is Kathy from West Olive. I'm really
enjoying the podcast so far. Thanks for doing it. I'd
love to hear you talk about the electoral College, how
it came to be, what the thoughts were behind it's
coming to be, and whether or not it still serves
us well. There seems to be a lot of debate
(01:46):
surrounding the electoral College and whether we should still be
using that or going to a straight popular vote. I'd
really love to hear whatever expert you might ask to
come on talk about it and it down for us too.
Thanks again for all you're doing. Really enjoy the show.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
So I love these questions, Kathy, and I'm glad you're
enjoying the show. What is your reaction to those questions
for us, Peter, I just gotta I just gotta get
your initial reactions.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
They're very good questions. In fact, there are questions that
have been asked about the electoral College and our constitution
pretty much. I was about to say the day was ratified,
but before that, people, even before it was ratified, people were.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Like, what the hell is this.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
And I'll note that although the US Constitution, the longest
surviving so far constitution written constitution in the Western democratic world,
has inspired countless other movements and countries to establish their
own democracies, not one of them have adopted anything like
(02:53):
our electoral college. You know how they say that. You
may have heard the National parks where america.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Is best idea.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
The electoral college pretty much America's worst idea.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
For those who don't know. And I'm gonna you know,
we just probably everybody knows, but just for if there's
someone out there who doesn't know what the electoral college is,
what is it?
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (03:16):
The electoral colleges, as I said, a unique system that
our framers back in Philadelphia, when they created the constitution
in seventeen eighty seven, decided they would use exclusively to
elect the president. In the rest of the document, they
allowed called for a popular election of say representatives. The
(03:42):
senators in the upper House were supposed to be elected
by legislators. That was later changed by constitutional amendment, so
they didn't have a problem with popular elections for other offices,
but they decided that for the role of the president,
they wanted to do something unique and for a variety
of reasons. And the way it works is every state
(04:04):
gets a number of electors officers equal to the number
of representatives they have in Congress. That means one for
every member of thuse representatives plus two one free senator. So,
for example, if a state happens to have five congressmen
or representatives congressmen back then only men did it, and
(04:25):
two senators, that state would have seven electoral votes. And then,
as the system was designed, the way it works is
each state can elect however they wanted.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
They're electors.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
They could choose them anyway they wanted. They could appoint
them by legislature, which I think one state did, but
most of them from the very beginning did popular elections.
They could elect these electors, and then these electors would,
in their wisdom, cast the votes for president. And the
initial idea was that these electors would be wise men,
(04:59):
worldly men, knowledgeable men chosen by the people of a
state to represent their interests. Right, So if that hypothetical
state had seven electors, those seven electors would stroke their chins,
probably their beards depending on the time, and they would
decide which of the candidates for president was best. Now,
very quickly. That's not how it worked at all. Instead,
(05:21):
what happened is the system we now have where there's
one slate of electors for each presidential candidate.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Right.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
So if, again our hypothetical state, the popular vote goes
for candidate X as opposed to candidate why then the
candidate x's electors get to cast their votes, and of
course all of them go for candidate X. They were elected,
they said vote for me, I will vote for candidate X,
(05:49):
And that's the way it's pretty much played out. They changed,
they fiddled with the system a little bit with a
twelve amendment, but basically that's how it's been playing out
pretty much since our founding in the very first presidential election.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
So getting back to the founders, you know, at the
time you got big states in small states, free states,
and slave states. Who was pushing the most for the
electoral college?
Speaker 2 (06:15):
The electoral college was pushed for primarily by small states
and slave states. And the reasons make a little sense
if you consider it from their perspective. The first thing
you need to do is you need to remember this
is something that was impressed upon me by Akil reed Amar,
Professor a Yale a World renowned expert in the US
(06:38):
Constitution who was our sort of in house expert on
our TV show Constitution USA for PBS. It's impossible for
us now to comprehend how big America was, even just
the thirteen coastal colonies. It was a continent. The Continental Congress.
This was a time, of course, when there was no
(06:58):
electronic communication. Messages went as fast as a horse or
a ship could take them. If you lived in sane Massachusetts,
Virginia was an impossible distance away within months to get there,
you would probably never ever go or even meet somebody
from there. And the states were very, very different. They
(07:19):
had different populations, different kinds of industry, different kinds of agriculture.
The agriculture in Massachusetts, for example, very different than in Virginia.
They had different I don't know, sort of ethos. For example,
everybody knows Massachusetts was founded by Puritans. Well, Rhode Island
next door was founded by people who couldn't stand the
(07:39):
goddamn Puritans and wanted to get away from them. In
Philadelphia was founded by rather excuse me, Pennsylvania was founded
by William penn as a kind of free thinking you know,
utopia where everybody could live in peace, and the southern states,
Virginia and Georgia. The Carolinas were a Agrayan and of
course slave colonies, so they had very very different perspectives.
(08:01):
So the Electoral College had three purposes, one of which
was due to that distance, that vastness, that continental scale
of our new country, the idea being that there is
no way in the world, even a literate man in
Massachusetts and that, remember was more or less a requirement
to vote. You had to be a white man who
(08:22):
owned property would have any idea who the principal candidates
for president were. They just wouldn't know your average I think,
as they used to say, yeomen on the land, wouldn't
have any idea who these people were. So how could
you trust this person to make a wise choice? This
elect these soulons, these educated people, these these statesmen, who
(08:44):
would know and they'll cast a wiser vote? And there
was some legitimacy to that. One thing that the founders
completely miffed, They did not understand at all was that
the system they were creating would instantly call into being
political parties. They didn't realize that they didn't want political parties.
They got them because the system they created gave all
(09:06):
the power of any given office or government to whoever
has fifty votes plus one. So all of a sudden
people started clumping together into interest groups to get to
fifty plus one, and instantly.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
We had political parties.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
We've always had more or less two political parties in
this country, and threw different names standing for different things.
But that happened quickly, and so obviously you didn't need to.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Know who the candidate was.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
If you were a democratic voter, Democratic Party or a
Federalist party or the Democratic Republicans as they were called,
you just voted for your candidate, So that became, shall
we say, irrelevant, pretty quickly. The second reason was all
the states had their own election rules, right, Some states might,
(09:51):
you know, have some states had property requirements, and they varied.
If you gave the states the popular vote, a big
state like say Pennsylvania could say, oh, by the way,
women can vote, and all of a sudden their voting
population would double, and thus they would have an even
(10:11):
greater influence over who got to be president. So by
telling states, yeah, you can run elections however you want,
but what you're going to be doing is electing a
certain number of electors.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
They managed to make that irrelevant.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Right, any state could do anything wanted to elect those
in our example state seven electors. Final reason, and this
is why it carried the day, and this is why
it ended up being such a terrible thing for this country,
at least for the first four score and ten years,
is the slave states knew that they would be outnumbered
(10:47):
in every way by the free States. One thing people
may not know is how broad slavery was in the
early years of our republic. For example, Virginia at the
time of the ratification of the Constitution had about four
hundred thousand people living in it free people and about
(11:09):
three hundred thousand enslaved people. That's a lot, and that
raises a lot of questions. But the important thing to
know is that they knew that they could not compete
in a fair fight electorally with the free states. They
just didn't have the numbers of free people that say Massachusetts, Pennsylvania,
(11:34):
did New York State. There is a thing in the
Constitution called the three fifths Clause, sometimes referred to as
the three fifths Compromise, which makes me crazy. And sometimes
you'll hear about it that Goh was a compromise, you see,
because the Slave States wanted all of their enslaved people
to be counted for political representation, right, so you count
(11:58):
them and then you get representatives in Congress based on
that population as well. And of course the Free States
wanted them not to be counted at all, on the
basic idea that, well, what do you mean they count.
They're not going to count, they don't get to vote,
they have.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
No civil rights.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Why should they be included in any way in this
democracy that we are also completely excluding them from by
denying them many human rights at all. But because the
Free States knew that if they didn't accommodate the Slave States,
there would be no constitution, there would be no United.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
States, they let it go and they quote.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Unquote compromised, meaning that an enslaved person would count as
three fifths of a free person in counting up population
for representation. Right, So that means my math is bad.
But of those three hundred thousand enslaved people in Virginia,
three fifths of them got counted toward representation, meaning Virginia
(12:56):
got extra members of Congress even though they weren't even
the numbers of people who were voting for them. Didn't change, right,
because slaves couldn't vote, and that meant that they got
extra electoral votes.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Right.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
So when you think of and this was actually in
a congressional argument I was reading in the early years
of our nation, Georgia congressman saying that the enslaved population
were the machinery of the South. Right, so the machinery
got the votes.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Machinery got the votes.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Yes, But in the North, people like Governor Morris would
argue during the Constitutional Convention that, hey, the furniture doesn't
get the.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Vote, right. Yeah. The quote I was just reading was
I was refreshing myself. He said something about like, we're
not counting our cows for representation. Why do you get
to count these people you are treating as cattle?
Speaker 3 (13:50):
But the Southern argument.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Three fifth, Peter, I'm sorry to interrupted, but why three fifths?
Speaker 2 (13:55):
What was weird? What was weird was I was reading
about it, and apparently there wasn't a huge debate about it,
at least not as reflected in the records of the
Constitutional Convention. Basically, one representative I think it was George
Mason from Virginia. There's a college named for him, said Okay,
how about if we just count him as three fifths.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Does that work for everybody? Okay? Good, yes, great?
Speaker 1 (14:16):
And it just because no one wants to do math.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
No one wants to do math, and more to the point,
nobody wants.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
To really talk about it.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
There's this amazing evasion in the Constitution of the issue
of slavery. Slavery is implicitly endorsed three times in the Constitution,
one in or rather it's mentioned and sort of mention
in a way like, yeah, we we have slavery. One
was the three Fists clause, another was the fugitive Slave clause,
(14:45):
and the third was a clause saying that international slave
trade and importation of slaves would end by a certain
date eighteen oh five. I think so the Constitution, in
a weird way endorsed aloud accepted the existence of slavery.
But it never mentions the world slavery. It does not
say enslave people. It says people held to service. And
(15:07):
that really reflects their great I don't know contradiction that
they knew they were creating a government based explicitly on
ideas of inherent human rights, and they were doing it
while at the same time condemning hundreds of thousands, if
not millions of people at that even at that time,
(15:29):
and god knows how many in terms of their future
generations to a condition of as we have already said,
that's akin to cattle with no human rights.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
People who could be.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Soul bought, worked to death, tortured, raped, anything you wanted
to do to them. And they created this country which
had these astonishing ideals and this astonishing evil and a
contradiction to every one of those ideals at the same time.
And the way they dealt with that contradiction is they
simply didn't talk about it.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
So, Peter, you know when I when I do the math,
I think about the there were consequences to that compromise,
if if they want to call it a compromise. The
South wan right, they got the better end of the deal,
because of course Washington's Washington. You can almost exclude him.
But then you get Adams, Okay, that's Massachusetts, right. Then
(16:23):
you get Jefferson Virginia, Madison, Virginia, Monroe, Virginia, you get
Quincy Adams, then you get Tennessee, you get Van Buren
in New York. But he's really you know, the northern
men that would slave with Southern ideals, right, So it
seems like and I think William Freeling, the Great history
(16:46):
of William Freeling in the Road to Disunion, he talks
about what thirty six of the of the thirty two
of the first thirty six years of the nation is.
It's were dominated by the South, yep, not only by presidents,
but Supreme Court justices, by by secretaries of state, by
all the positions that matter the most. The South dominated.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Exactly, and it's all because of the elect well, not all.
They also had a lot of wealth and a lot
of power based on slavery, but structurally it was due
to the combination of the electoral College, which gave each
state votes and the same number as their representatives, and
the three fifths clause, which gave the slave power more representation,
(17:30):
more electoral votes. Basically, every president until Lincoln was either
a slave owner themselves or sympathetic to slavery, with two.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Exceptions, both named Adams.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Who and neither of them, by the way, did anything
to interfere with it, because that would have been the
end of their political career. If you read any history
of the first you know century of the United States,
from founding to the Civil war, You realize that slavery
was the most important topic, the most important issue, whether
(18:04):
it would be extended, whether it would be banned, whether
it would be abolished, whether it would be whether it
would flourish. It dominated every political debate, and rightfully so,
because it was this monstrosity that some people relied on
as the basis of their wealth and their entire culture,
and other people saw as the vast evil that it was.
(18:26):
Of course it was going to be the main subject
of discussion and debate. And by the way, one other
thing that the three fist clause did was it created
a really good incentive to acquire more enslaved people, right,
more of them you had. You get enough of them,
you can get another congressman out of it. And so
(18:47):
it just created a situation where slavery became not just
the basis of economic power in the South, to a
degree that we don't really appreciate now that the entire
system was based on slave labor, but also created like
it also gave them their political power. It was a
win win win from their evil perspective.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
This is American History Hotline. I'm your host Bob Crawford. Today.
My guest is Peter Segel, host of MPRS. Wait wait,
don't tell me. A fellow historian as well. You might
remember his PBS show of a few years back, Constitution USA.
We're talking about the five hundred and thirty eight votes
that actually matter in the in American presidential elections. That's right,
(19:38):
the electoral College. Remember to send us your burning questions
about American history. Record yourself using the voice memo app
on your phone and email it to American History Hotline
at gmail dot com. You can also send us your
thoughts on the electoral College. Do you love it? Do
you hate it? Do you kind of like it? But
you're waiting for it to text you first? So you
(20:01):
don't seem desperate, right James, Peter, I don't read these
before I understand ye. Send your amusings to American History
Outline at gmail dot com. Now back to the show,
all right, Peter, So, looking at recent headlines in Texas,
(20:25):
they are going to do something to give themselves more
political power in the Republican Party. You know, when I
think it's hard to not live in the historical sense
of this being that what we talked about last block,
every time new territory was acquired, and brought into the Union.
(20:49):
It sparked another debate that was about the electoral college
right right, Would this land be slaved? Would this land
be free? Always conflict. There were northern politicians who wanted freeland.
Not because they were compassionate towards the enslaved and wanted emancipation. No,
because they wanted political power. This is all about power.
(21:12):
So right now in Texas they are redrawing or by
the time this airs, redrew the districts to give the
Republican Party more seats friendly to themselves. So talk about
these districts, sure, and how they are allocated and drawn
(21:33):
and when do we typically draw them.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
This is I should say, by the way, that this
is a different issue. This is the issue of gerrymandering,
which usually applies to congressional districts or state legislature districts.
And jerry mandering is a very old phenomenon in America,
as evidenced by the fact that it was named for
Elbridge Gary, who was actually at the Constitutional Convention before
(22:00):
going on to become governor of Massachusetts. He drew a
congressional map that had a district that was so weird
looking it was looked like a salamander, and it was
called the Gary mander or the gerrymander, and thus we
have it. Now, what's going on with that is a
very different issue. Member electoral College votes are given to
whoever wins a statewide election, so just like governor or senator,
(22:23):
it's a statewide race, and so the issue of districts
within a state is irrelevant. But this issue is it's
one of those things, one of the many things we've
discovered in the last ten years where we find out
that what we thought were rules were only guidelines.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
To quote pirates of the Caribbean.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
So the guideline the practice was every ten years, as
called for in the Constitution, there would be a new census.
And after the census, when we knew what the new
population was of persons, by the way, not citizens, I
should say that the Constitution says persons. You would read
all the districts, and over the years of the decades,
(23:08):
as political parties, as I said, first sprang into being
and then became more and more powerful, those people realized
that they could district to their advantage. And that's gotten
much much worse in recent years decades for two reasons.
First of all, computers, you could say, for example, that Chicago,
(23:31):
where I live, is a Democratic town. We always knew
that the vote of Chicago would go to the Democratic candidate.
Now with computers, you can find out which blocks went
for them, which houses practically went for Democrats. So if
you were to draw, if you wanted to draw a
map that you could guarantee would maximize the number of
(23:56):
Democratic voters, as we have done in fact to a
great extent here in Illinois.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
You can do it. You can do it with these
computers and these mapping softwares.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
And the Robert Supreme Court has weighed in on this,
blessed their heart, and what they have said is that
you can't draw districts to deprive people of equal weight
(24:26):
as voters because of their race. Racial jerry manders are illegal,
but partisan jerry manders are fine, according to the Robert
Supreme Court. Right, So all a state has to do,
and this has happened many times to justify a jerrymander
that say, cuts up a significant black population in order
(24:51):
to dilute their vote so they can't vote for the
person that population would want to represent their particular interests
and say oh no, no, no, no, no, it's not it's
not a racial jerry manner, which it's a and jerrymander.
Those black people, they just vote for Democrats. We're not
screwing them over because they're black. No, no, no, we're
screwing them over because they're Democrats. And according to the
Robber Square, that's totally fine. Now, state courts have over
(25:13):
the last few years intervened because state constitutions have their
own provisions about the right to vote, although that's gotten
to be a battlefield as well to take there's as
actually an interesting case that's parallel the states of Wisconsin
in North Carolina. In the state of Wisconsin, a map
passed by the Republican legislature supermajority imposed Republican favored jerrymander
(25:37):
on the state of Wisconsin. However, the people of Wisconsin
got together and elected new members of the Supreme Court who,
unlike the prior Supreme courts, the no, no, no, no, no,
you can't do that, and they threw out those maps
on the instituted fairer maps. In the state of North Carolina,
the opposite thing happened. The Republican supermajority passed a very
Republican favored map. In fact, as evidence showed it a
(25:59):
particular trial, it was designed specifically to dilute the votes
of the black population of North Carolina. The state Supreme
Court said, no, no, no, you can't do it. It's
not democracy. One person won vote. Everybody should be able
to vote for the candidate of their choice. It shouldn't
be predetermined by politicians drawing maps. So then there was
a Supreme Court election in North Carolina which which took
(26:21):
two seats away from liberal nonpartisan yes fine, from the
Democratic candidates, and gave it to the Republicans. And what
do you know, the new Republican majority in North Carolina said,
you know, actually, now that we think about it, it
turns out those maps are fine. So generally speaking, both
sides do it. There's very little things you can do
(26:42):
about it, because the Supreme Court won't intervene, and the
state supreme courts tend now to be just as partisan
as the state legislator. So, for example, in Texas, the
chances of the state Supreme Corps, which is all appointed
by Republicans governors, the chances of them intervening in this
(27:03):
to say oh no, no, no, you can't do it
are minimal because to go back to my original point,
it's not a law that you have to do it
just once every ten years. It's just the way it's
always been done, because that's fair. If you don't care
about being fair, you can do what you want.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Thank you for indulging my digression. I appreciate that, Kathy.
We're going to get back to your question specifically. Does
the electoral college still serve us well today?
Speaker 2 (27:36):
No, not at all, although for different reasons, people have
known the electoral college is messed up for.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
A long long time.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
There have been many, many, many attempts to amend the
Constitution so as to eliminate it and go to a
popular election of the president, because, as I said, he's
the only officeholder that is not elected through popular majority.
In fact, in the nineteen sixties and late nineteen sixties,
Indiana Senator Birch Bay came so incredibly close to getting
(28:07):
rid of the electoral College. He convinced the House of
Representatives to pass an amendment, and they did by the
I think it's the three fourths majority necessary to pass
an amendment, but it was filibustered in the Senate by
Southern segregationists. Even after the passage of the Voting Rights
(28:27):
Act in the mid sixties and sixty five, Southern senators
knew that it is very hard for black people to
vote in their states, and thus they wanted the power.
They would rather have the power of the electoral College
than have to open up the vote to their actual population.
These days, the problem with the electoral college is very different,
(28:51):
and it's really simple to describe in that it makes
the vast majority of voters in America completely irrelevant, utterly irrelevant.
I live in Illinois. Illinois is a blue state. As
we say, now, sure I can vote for the Democrat
(29:14):
if I want. It's not going to make any difference.
The Democrat electors are going to win in the state
of Illinois. But it's really frustrating for Republicans in Illinois
because they don't matter at all. It doesn't care, nobody
cares what they want because they don't have any influence
in a presidential election. The same is true with Republicans
(29:36):
in California, or Democrats in Texas, or Democrats in South
Carolina increasingly in Florida, or Republicans in New York State,
or in Republicans of Vermont in the classic blue states,
none of their votes matter. And what that means is
none of their concerns matter unless they're rich. Right, donors
(29:57):
will always have a voice. But for the vast majority
of to use this example, Republican voters in California, whatever
they prefer doesn't matter. It's it's irrelevant. They're essentially disenfranchised.
If you are Republican living in California, you're a vote
for president does not matter. If you are a Democrat
living in Texas, you're a vote for president does not matter.
And that's bad, but it has a It has a
(30:21):
distorting effect on presidential politics. Obviously, it means that the
focus of the presidential campaigns is always going to be
on those swing states, those very few states whereby virtue
of a balance of populations, they could go either way,
thus swinging your Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, to a certain extent, Nevada, Arizona.
(30:43):
Those are the ones that only only so all of
the attention is given to those states. And if you
talk to anybody who lives in say Pennsylvania, during a
presidential campaign, they will tell you how incredibly annoying it
is that they're constantly deluged by everything, by ads and appearances.
And that's good for pennsylvan I guess, but why shouldn't
the people of New York State, which is right next
(31:03):
door get attention? But it also means that I think
our politics get really distorted. Assume for a minute that
Democrats in Texas, because of their cultural heritage and everything else,
are slightly more conservative than Democrats national. Assume for the
same argument that Republicans in California, for the same reasons
they live in California, are more liberal in general than
(31:26):
Republicans nationwide. Because those people are written out of the
presidential elections entirely, that potentially moderating influence has no effect. Right,
You could have that sort of more mainstream politics that
everybody demands that we need. If you simply empowered the
(31:49):
people who live in solid blue or solid red states,
all of them to vote, we would have truly national
elections for our national aw office, and everybody would be empowered.
And you have no idea what would happen. We've never
had an election without the electoral College. We don't know
(32:11):
what it would look like if Republicans in California knew
their vote would count, or Democrats in Texas or Democrats
in the Deep South. We don't know what they would
do if they knew their vote counted. I mean, for example,
the conventional wisdom of the twenty twenty four election is
that Kamala Harris lost because so many Democrats stayed home. Okay,
(32:33):
let's assume that's true. Would they have stayed home. Would
they have stayed home if they knew that their vote
actually counted. We'll never know, and we should know. I
think that the popular vote for a president and vice
president in this country would moderate our politics and would
make our choice of president far more reflective of the
(32:54):
nation as a whole than it has been ever.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Are there any pro so you laid out the cons
for the electoral college, you laid out the pros for
popular vote. Are there any pros you can think of
right now that the electoral college still has going in
its favor.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Well, the one you'll hear is that it gives the
small states disproportionate power, right. I mean, it makes sure
that they're not run roughshot over, and that to a
certain extent is true. It's also true in their representation
of Congress. As I'm sure you've heard, Wyoming, which has
a smaller population than Los Angeles County. Maybe even the
(33:38):
city of Los Angeles I haven't checked recently has two senators.
That seems unfair to me anyway, but there's nothing we
can do about that. The senator is here to stay.
But I think that the small state argument falls apart
when you realize again, yeah, Wyoming gets a disproportionate say,
(34:01):
because of the electoral College. They their electoral votes are
a higher proportion of the total electoral votes votes than
their population is a proportion of the national population, so
they get a lift. But at the same time, the
entire you know, all the Democrats in Wyoming or Montana,
(34:23):
they're completely irrelevant. So sure you'd lose that sort of
boost of influence you get in Wyoming or Montana, but
you'd also get some You'd all of a sudden, the
people of Missoula, for example, which is a pretty liberal place,
would be able to have some small influence in a
presidential election, at least as much as their neighbors. And
(34:43):
that to me, this from the perspective of Montana, say,
should carry a lot of weight, unless, of course, you
are a rock rib Republican and you don't want the
Democrats in Montana to have any influence. So I think,
just in terms of fairness, the idea of empowering every
individual vastly outweighs this notion of small states having being
(35:07):
run roughshod over.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
It's unlikely that we'll go to a popular vote.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Right.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Seventeen states have national Popular Vote legislation that's become law, right,
and that reflects two hundred and nine electoral votes. So
these are but these are mostly blue states, right, And
there's something Oh, go ahead.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Yeah, And just to explain to your listeners, this is
something that once birch Bay's amendment failed, he'd signed up
for the National Popular Vote Compact. And remember I said,
under the design of the Constitution, any state can assign
can choose electoral votes any way they want. Right, you
can have the legislature do it. You can draw lots
whatever you want. Most states do it by whoever whatever
(35:48):
slate wins the popular vote in your state. The National
Popular Vote Compact is an idea where states agree that
their electoral votes go to the winner of the national
popular vote whatever their state did. So, again, to take
an example, that's extremely unlikely if Wyoming were to sign
up to this and in a presidential election, Wyoming goes
(36:12):
eighty percent for the Republican, but the national vote goes
to the Democrat. Then Wyoming would sign its electors to
the Democratic candidate, or would technically select the electors who
were pledged to the Democratic candidate. That's a good idea,
I mean, it's a way to doing an end run
around the requirements for a constitutional amendment, the only other
(36:33):
way to do it. There are a lot of unanswered questions.
Even if this did work, I mean, all of a sudden,
the popular vote becomes really important because it's going to
decide the president, but we're still going to be dealing
with a system of states controlling their own elections. We
(36:54):
go back to that first problem that they thought the
electoral College would solve, which is that how do you
make sure the Pennsylvania doesn't goose its vote to get
more popular votes for the president. Well, you just tell
them they can do whatever you want. But they only get,
however many electoral votes. So all of a sudden, we'd
have a system where the individual popular votes directly elected
(37:15):
the president, right, individual states, I mean, but we would
have a state by state system of counting those votes
state by state laws, and as we know, sadly to
this day, voting is not a constitutional right. It can
be diminished, it can be taken away. They're in the
fifth Amendment. You can take away somebody's right to vote
(37:38):
if they commit a felony. I'm sorry, that's not the
fifth to fifteenth. So the problem is, again it would
raise all these other questions that a constitutional amendment would
by its nature have to solve and to be passed.
But I would say probably if you were to let
met it this way, to institute a national popular vote
(38:01):
through the compact, or to require the kind of national
cooperation and willingness to give up immediate advantage for the
long term health of the nation that we just haven't
seen in this country for a very long time.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
So we.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Can't do it in small things, we can't do it
in big things.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
Yeah, and it's quite terrifying. And one of the things
that's going on, as I'm sure you know, is right
now the Republican Party, it wasn't always a Republican party.
It is now used to be the Democratic Party way
back when is using the anti majoritarian aspects of our constitution,
(38:46):
most especially the Senate and the Supreme Court's role to
basically rule as a minority in this country. That is,
the things they're doing are not very popular.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
Holes tell us.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Certainly this last election, President Trump did in fact win
the popular vote by a small margin. But nonetheless they're
using these mechanisms to impose a vision on the country
that in its specifics is not particularly popular. And as
we've also seen and here again we returned to the
thing in Texas, they're also really intent on using the
(39:24):
power they have to cement the power into the future
to make sure that their lack of support for their
specific policy ideas doesn't prevent them from retaining the power
to carry them out.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
I asked this final question with the knowledge that as
a historian, historians are terrible predicting the future.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
That's why the historians, right, it's history.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
Yeah, so do you think the electoral college is here
to stay?
Speaker 2 (39:57):
The only way it would go away is if in
one of two circumstances. One is that the party that
at that moment had an advantage through its use. Right
now it's the Republican Party. It wasn't always it was
the Democratic Party. Within my lifetime. If that party agrees
to give up that advantage, that's unlikely. The other possibility
(40:21):
is that both sides decide that it's so bad that
it just has to be done away with, which is
what almost happened with Birch Bay's amendment, because it came
out of the election of sixty eight. In nineteen sixty eight,
George Wallace came close to winning enough electoral votes I
can't remember the number exactly so as to deprive the
(40:44):
other two candidates, Nixon or Humphrey, of a majority. And
if that had happened a couple one more state, maybe two,
maybe two more, depending the election would have gone to
the House of Representatives. And that is something that's never happened, well,
sort of never happened eighteen seventy six, whole other thing.
John Quincy Adams, Yeah, yeah, it has You're right, it
(41:06):
has happened before, but it hasn't happened in say, modern America.
And that was so horrifying. It was so horrifying to
bird Bay in a lot of other people that this
Southern segregationist almost threw the the election into the into
the House of Representatives, that he was able to generate
a tremendous amount of support for doing away with this system.
That almost led to that disastrous outcome until he was
(41:27):
stopped by the other Southern segregationists.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
And so this was also the plan, Peter.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
This is also one of the plans mentioned by the
Trump campaign. How so to send it well, because yes,
wrapping up by propping up r FK, they could potentially
throw it into the House. And yeah, of course, the
the Republicans hold the legislatures. Yes, legislature gets.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
A vote, right, And the way it works, if I'm
not mistaken, is and they this is part of their
plan in twenty twenty. What I believe Peter Navaro called
the Greek the Eastman's plan, and what Peter Navarro called
the Green Bay sweep is that if you could just
disqualify enough electoral votes from certain swing states, you can
(42:16):
create enough confusion that it would be thrown to the
House of Representatives. And there every delegation gets a vote,
not every member. So even though Democrats might have had
a majority of members, they did not have a majority
of delegations, and the majority of delegations would have elected
or rather re elected President Trump.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
Yeah, that's bad too.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
I guess that the problem is is it's hard at
this point to imagine a potential outcome like what happened
in sixty eight that would be sufficiently horrifying to a
majority bipartisan by partisan majority in this country that they
would step into prevent it from happening. That's the thing
I don't see happening. And because of that, I don't know.
(42:57):
I just wish that again. And this is an accident
of history and not thing to do with their particular character.
At this moment that the Republicans who see who believe
that the electoral College is to their advantage and it
is right now, I wish they would see that it
would be even more to their advantage and their voters
to do away with it because of what I said before,
(43:17):
because of those disenfranchised Republicans, and there are so many
of them. There were more voters for Trump in California
this last election than there were in West Virginia. In
California or it didn't matter. Imagine if their votes mattered,
If all of those people in Orange County or the
Inland Empire, or the northeastern counties of California, those Republican areas,
(43:41):
if their vote counted, Imagine how well great that would
be for those Republican voters. I and you know the
same thing. We'd go for Democrats in other states, and
you'd hope in a rational world that the Republican Party
would see that they'd respond to the pressure from those
people make sure our votes count and pressed.
Speaker 3 (44:01):
For that reform.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
But like a lot of very smart and useful ideas,
I don't see that having a lot of life right now.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
Producer James wants to end on a positive note. Oh please,
Is there anything hopeful you're seeing now about anything? Even
non politics?
Speaker 2 (44:19):
Oh gosh, jeez, it's a tough question, and you know,
everybody returns to small things. My kids are doing great.
But in terms of national politics, I do think that,
as is often the case in any crisis, people are
being awoken, awakened, awakened to the reality that they face
(44:44):
in terms of the country that they want, the country
that they have, and the country that we are rapidly
becoming unless something changes. To quote Barack Obama, we are
the change that we're looking for. Vout somebody else, I mean,
nobody coming to save us. And I do think that
people see that and know it, and I think that
(45:08):
the Internet is far less the blessing than we all
thought it would be when we when they first thought
of it. But at the same time, it's allowing people
to understand what's happening across the country in a way
that is inspiring a lot of people, and on both
sides to take action. People are responding.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
I mean.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
One of the things that I have said as I've
gone around the country and talked about the constitution and democracy,
which in general I'm a big fan of both, is
that as long as you have democracy and it's a vibrant,
effective democracy i e. It actually works, You vote and
the winner of the vote gets the whole power for
(45:49):
the limited period of time that they have, and the
other side respects that victory, which used to be the norm.
As long as you have democracy, there's nothing that you
can can't fix. There's no other problem that you can't fix.
If the government has gone really wrong in a direction,
a democracy, if required, will provide the corrective. If the
(46:13):
government is doing something that the majority of the people dislike,
then the majority of people will fix it. And that's
the only hope, and as long as that's possible, hope remains.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
I've been talking to Peter Segel, host of MPR's Wait
Wait Don't Tell Me, a fellow historian as well. Check
out his PBS show from a few years back, Constitution USA.
It's got the Constitution and Harley Davidson's what else do
you need? Peter. It's such treat to have you on
American History Hotline today.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
Thank you. It's been a pleasure. I always love talking
about this stuff. And you know, everybody get out there
and vote. Everybody, get involved. Everybody make your feelings known.
Everybody make your opinion known. That's your obligation as a citizen.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
You've been listening to American History Hotline, a production of
iHeart Podcasts and Scratch Track Productions. The show's executive producer
is James Morrison. Our executive producers from iHeart are Jordan
Runtall and Jason English. Original music composed by me Bob Crawford.
Please keep in touch. Our email is Americanhistoryhotline at gmail
(47:28):
dot com. If you like the show, please tell your
friends and leave us a review in Apple Podcasts. I'm
your host, Bob Crawford. Feel free to hit me up
on social media to ask a history question or to
let me know what you think of the show. You
can find me at Bob Crawford Base. Thanks so much
(47:48):
for listening, See you next week,
You've reached American History Hotline. You asked the questions, we
get the answers.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Leave a message.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Hey, there, American History Hotliners. Bob Crawford here, thrilled to
be joining you again for another episode of American History Hotline,
the show where you asked the questions and I get
you the answers. And the best way to get us
a question is to record a video or a voice
memo on your phone and email it to American History
(00:31):
Hotline at gmail dot com. That's Americanhistoryhotline at gmail dot com.
All right, enough of a preamble, let's get to today's question.
It's a great one, and with a good question, a
question this good, we had to bring in the big
guns here to help me answer it is. And I'm
(00:52):
gonna say this, this man is an institution. Peter Segel,
host of MPR's Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me and the
PBS show So Constitution USA.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Hey, and I want to say nice little you know
set up there by using preamble there in your introduction,
got us in the constitutional mood.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
This show has great writers.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
We're all dependent on them.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Okay, Peter, let's get to the show. Of course, it's
just an honor to have you today. Here's the question
we were hoping you could help us answer.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
Hi, Bob, this is Kathy from West Olive. I'm really
enjoying the podcast so far. Thanks for doing it. I'd
love to hear you talk about the electoral College, how
it came to be, what the thoughts were behind it's
coming to be, and whether or not it still serves
us well. There seems to be a lot of debate
(01:46):
surrounding the electoral College and whether we should still be
using that or going to a straight popular vote. I'd
really love to hear whatever expert you might ask to
come on talk about it and it down for us too.
Thanks again for all you're doing. Really enjoy the show.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
So I love these questions, Kathy, and I'm glad you're
enjoying the show. What is your reaction to those questions
for us, Peter, I just gotta I just gotta get
your initial reactions.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
They're very good questions. In fact, there are questions that
have been asked about the electoral College and our constitution
pretty much. I was about to say the day was ratified,
but before that, people, even before it was ratified, people were.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Like, what the hell is this.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
And I'll note that although the US Constitution, the longest
surviving so far constitution written constitution in the Western democratic world,
has inspired countless other movements and countries to establish their
own democracies, not one of them have adopted anything like
(02:53):
our electoral college. You know how they say that. You
may have heard the National parks where america.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Is best idea.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
The electoral college pretty much America's worst idea.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
For those who don't know. And I'm gonna you know,
we just probably everybody knows, but just for if there's
someone out there who doesn't know what the electoral college is,
what is it?
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (03:16):
The electoral colleges, as I said, a unique system that
our framers back in Philadelphia, when they created the constitution
in seventeen eighty seven, decided they would use exclusively to
elect the president. In the rest of the document, they
allowed called for a popular election of say representatives. The
(03:42):
senators in the upper House were supposed to be elected
by legislators. That was later changed by constitutional amendment, so
they didn't have a problem with popular elections for other offices,
but they decided that for the role of the president,
they wanted to do something unique and for a variety
of reasons. And the way it works is every state
(04:04):
gets a number of electors officers equal to the number
of representatives they have in Congress. That means one for
every member of thuse representatives plus two one free senator. So,
for example, if a state happens to have five congressmen
or representatives congressmen back then only men did it, and
(04:25):
two senators, that state would have seven electoral votes. And then,
as the system was designed, the way it works is
each state can elect however they wanted.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
They're electors.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
They could choose them anyway they wanted. They could appoint
them by legislature, which I think one state did, but
most of them from the very beginning did popular elections.
They could elect these electors, and then these electors would,
in their wisdom, cast the votes for president. And the
initial idea was that these electors would be wise men,
(04:59):
worldly men, knowledgeable men chosen by the people of a
state to represent their interests. Right, So if that hypothetical
state had seven electors, those seven electors would stroke their chins,
probably their beards depending on the time, and they would
decide which of the candidates for president was best. Now,
very quickly. That's not how it worked at all. Instead,
(05:21):
what happened is the system we now have where there's
one slate of electors for each presidential candidate.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Right.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
So if, again our hypothetical state, the popular vote goes
for candidate X as opposed to candidate why then the
candidate x's electors get to cast their votes, and of
course all of them go for candidate X. They were elected,
they said vote for me, I will vote for candidate X,
(05:49):
And that's the way it's pretty much played out. They changed,
they fiddled with the system a little bit with a
twelve amendment, but basically that's how it's been playing out
pretty much since our founding in the very first presidential election.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
So getting back to the founders, you know, at the
time you got big states in small states, free states,
and slave states. Who was pushing the most for the
electoral college?
Speaker 2 (06:15):
The electoral college was pushed for primarily by small states
and slave states. And the reasons make a little sense
if you consider it from their perspective. The first thing
you need to do is you need to remember this
is something that was impressed upon me by Akil reed Amar,
Professor a Yale a World renowned expert in the US
(06:38):
Constitution who was our sort of in house expert on
our TV show Constitution USA for PBS. It's impossible for
us now to comprehend how big America was, even just
the thirteen coastal colonies. It was a continent. The Continental Congress.
This was a time, of course, when there was no
(06:58):
electronic communication. Messages went as fast as a horse or
a ship could take them. If you lived in sane Massachusetts,
Virginia was an impossible distance away within months to get there,
you would probably never ever go or even meet somebody
from there. And the states were very, very different. They
(07:19):
had different populations, different kinds of industry, different kinds of agriculture.
The agriculture in Massachusetts, for example, very different than in Virginia.
They had different I don't know, sort of ethos. For example,
everybody knows Massachusetts was founded by Puritans. Well, Rhode Island
next door was founded by people who couldn't stand the
(07:39):
goddamn Puritans and wanted to get away from them. In
Philadelphia was founded by rather excuse me, Pennsylvania was founded
by William penn as a kind of free thinking you know,
utopia where everybody could live in peace, and the southern states,
Virginia and Georgia. The Carolinas were a Agrayan and of
course slave colonies, so they had very very different perspectives.
(08:01):
So the Electoral College had three purposes, one of which
was due to that distance, that vastness, that continental scale
of our new country, the idea being that there is
no way in the world, even a literate man in
Massachusetts and that, remember was more or less a requirement
to vote. You had to be a white man who
(08:22):
owned property would have any idea who the principal candidates
for president were. They just wouldn't know your average I think,
as they used to say, yeomen on the land, wouldn't
have any idea who these people were. So how could
you trust this person to make a wise choice? This
elect these soulons, these educated people, these these statesmen, who
(08:44):
would know and they'll cast a wiser vote? And there
was some legitimacy to that. One thing that the founders
completely miffed, They did not understand at all was that
the system they were creating would instantly call into being
political parties. They didn't realize that they didn't want political parties.
They got them because the system they created gave all
(09:06):
the power of any given office or government to whoever
has fifty votes plus one. So all of a sudden
people started clumping together into interest groups to get to
fifty plus one, and instantly.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
We had political parties.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
We've always had more or less two political parties in
this country, and threw different names standing for different things.
But that happened quickly, and so obviously you didn't need to.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Know who the candidate was.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
If you were a democratic voter, Democratic Party or a
Federalist party or the Democratic Republicans as they were called,
you just voted for your candidate, So that became, shall
we say, irrelevant, pretty quickly. The second reason was all
the states had their own election rules, right, Some states might,
(09:51):
you know, have some states had property requirements, and they varied.
If you gave the states the popular vote, a big
state like say Pennsylvania could say, oh, by the way,
women can vote, and all of a sudden their voting
population would double, and thus they would have an even
(10:11):
greater influence over who got to be president. So by
telling states, yeah, you can run elections however you want,
but what you're going to be doing is electing a
certain number of electors.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
They managed to make that irrelevant.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Right, any state could do anything wanted to elect those
in our example state seven electors. Final reason, and this
is why it carried the day, and this is why
it ended up being such a terrible thing for this country,
at least for the first four score and ten years,
is the slave states knew that they would be outnumbered
(10:47):
in every way by the free States. One thing people
may not know is how broad slavery was in the
early years of our republic. For example, Virginia at the
time of the ratification of the Constitution had about four
hundred thousand people living in it free people and about
(11:09):
three hundred thousand enslaved people. That's a lot, and that
raises a lot of questions. But the important thing to
know is that they knew that they could not compete
in a fair fight electorally with the free states. They
just didn't have the numbers of free people that say Massachusetts, Pennsylvania,
(11:34):
did New York State. There is a thing in the
Constitution called the three fifths Clause, sometimes referred to as
the three fifths Compromise, which makes me crazy. And sometimes
you'll hear about it that Goh was a compromise, you see,
because the Slave States wanted all of their enslaved people
to be counted for political representation, right, so you count
(11:58):
them and then you get representatives in Congress based on
that population as well. And of course the Free States
wanted them not to be counted at all, on the
basic idea that, well, what do you mean they count.
They're not going to count, they don't get to vote,
they have.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
No civil rights.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Why should they be included in any way in this
democracy that we are also completely excluding them from by
denying them many human rights at all. But because the
Free States knew that if they didn't accommodate the Slave States,
there would be no constitution, there would be no United.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
States, they let it go and they quote.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Unquote compromised, meaning that an enslaved person would count as
three fifths of a free person in counting up population
for representation. Right, So that means my math is bad.
But of those three hundred thousand enslaved people in Virginia,
three fifths of them got counted toward representation, meaning Virginia
(12:56):
got extra members of Congress even though they weren't even
the numbers of people who were voting for them. Didn't change, right,
because slaves couldn't vote, and that meant that they got
extra electoral votes.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Right.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
So when you think of and this was actually in
a congressional argument I was reading in the early years
of our nation, Georgia congressman saying that the enslaved population
were the machinery of the South. Right, so the machinery
got the votes.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Machinery got the votes.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Yes, But in the North, people like Governor Morris would
argue during the Constitutional Convention that, hey, the furniture doesn't
get the.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Vote, right. Yeah. The quote I was just reading was
I was refreshing myself. He said something about like, we're
not counting our cows for representation. Why do you get
to count these people you are treating as cattle?
Speaker 3 (13:50):
But the Southern argument.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Three fifth, Peter, I'm sorry to interrupted, but why three fifths?
Speaker 2 (13:55):
What was weird? What was weird was I was reading
about it, and apparently there wasn't a huge debate about it,
at least not as reflected in the records of the
Constitutional Convention. Basically, one representative I think it was George
Mason from Virginia. There's a college named for him, said Okay,
how about if we just count him as three fifths.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Does that work for everybody? Okay? Good, yes, great?
Speaker 1 (14:16):
And it just because no one wants to do math.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
No one wants to do math, and more to the point,
nobody wants.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
To really talk about it.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
There's this amazing evasion in the Constitution of the issue
of slavery. Slavery is implicitly endorsed three times in the Constitution,
one in or rather it's mentioned and sort of mention
in a way like, yeah, we we have slavery. One
was the three Fists clause, another was the fugitive Slave clause,
(14:45):
and the third was a clause saying that international slave
trade and importation of slaves would end by a certain
date eighteen oh five. I think so the Constitution, in
a weird way endorsed aloud accepted the existence of slavery.
But it never mentions the world slavery. It does not
say enslave people. It says people held to service. And
(15:07):
that really reflects their great I don't know contradiction that
they knew they were creating a government based explicitly on
ideas of inherent human rights, and they were doing it
while at the same time condemning hundreds of thousands, if
not millions of people at that even at that time,
(15:29):
and god knows how many in terms of their future
generations to a condition of as we have already said,
that's akin to cattle with no human rights.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
People who could be.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Soul bought, worked to death, tortured, raped, anything you wanted
to do to them. And they created this country which
had these astonishing ideals and this astonishing evil and a
contradiction to every one of those ideals at the same time.
And the way they dealt with that contradiction is they
simply didn't talk about it.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
So, Peter, you know when I when I do the math,
I think about the there were consequences to that compromise,
if if they want to call it a compromise. The
South wan right, they got the better end of the deal,
because of course Washington's Washington. You can almost exclude him.
But then you get Adams, Okay, that's Massachusetts, right. Then
(16:23):
you get Jefferson Virginia, Madison, Virginia, Monroe, Virginia, you get
Quincy Adams, then you get Tennessee, you get Van Buren
in New York. But he's really you know, the northern
men that would slave with Southern ideals, right, So it
seems like and I think William Freeling, the Great history
(16:46):
of William Freeling in the Road to Disunion, he talks
about what thirty six of the of the thirty two
of the first thirty six years of the nation is.
It's were dominated by the South, yep, not only by presidents,
but Supreme Court justices, by by secretaries of state, by
all the positions that matter the most. The South dominated.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Exactly, and it's all because of the elect well, not all.
They also had a lot of wealth and a lot
of power based on slavery, but structurally it was due
to the combination of the electoral College, which gave each
state votes and the same number as their representatives, and
the three fifths clause, which gave the slave power more representation,
(17:30):
more electoral votes. Basically, every president until Lincoln was either
a slave owner themselves or sympathetic to slavery, with two.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Exceptions, both named Adams.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Who and neither of them, by the way, did anything
to interfere with it, because that would have been the
end of their political career. If you read any history
of the first you know century of the United States,
from founding to the Civil war, You realize that slavery
was the most important topic, the most important issue, whether
(18:04):
it would be extended, whether it would be banned, whether
it would be abolished, whether it would be whether it
would flourish. It dominated every political debate, and rightfully so,
because it was this monstrosity that some people relied on
as the basis of their wealth and their entire culture,
and other people saw as the vast evil that it was.
(18:26):
Of course it was going to be the main subject
of discussion and debate. And by the way, one other
thing that the three fist clause did was it created
a really good incentive to acquire more enslaved people, right,
more of them you had. You get enough of them,
you can get another congressman out of it. And so
(18:47):
it just created a situation where slavery became not just
the basis of economic power in the South, to a
degree that we don't really appreciate now that the entire
system was based on slave labor, but also created like
it also gave them their political power. It was a
win win win from their evil perspective.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
This is American History Hotline. I'm your host Bob Crawford. Today.
My guest is Peter Segel, host of MPRS. Wait wait,
don't tell me. A fellow historian as well. You might
remember his PBS show of a few years back, Constitution USA.
We're talking about the five hundred and thirty eight votes
that actually matter in the in American presidential elections. That's right,
(19:38):
the electoral College. Remember to send us your burning questions
about American history. Record yourself using the voice memo app
on your phone and email it to American History Hotline
at gmail dot com. You can also send us your
thoughts on the electoral College. Do you love it? Do
you hate it? Do you kind of like it? But
you're waiting for it to text you first? So you
(20:01):
don't seem desperate, right James, Peter, I don't read these
before I understand ye. Send your amusings to American History
Outline at gmail dot com. Now back to the show,
all right, Peter, So, looking at recent headlines in Texas,
(20:25):
they are going to do something to give themselves more
political power in the Republican Party. You know, when I
think it's hard to not live in the historical sense
of this being that what we talked about last block,
every time new territory was acquired, and brought into the Union.
(20:49):
It sparked another debate that was about the electoral college
right right, Would this land be slaved? Would this land
be free? Always conflict. There were northern politicians who wanted freeland.
Not because they were compassionate towards the enslaved and wanted emancipation. No,
because they wanted political power. This is all about power.
(21:12):
So right now in Texas they are redrawing or by
the time this airs, redrew the districts to give the
Republican Party more seats friendly to themselves. So talk about
these districts, sure, and how they are allocated and drawn
(21:33):
and when do we typically draw them.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
This is I should say, by the way, that this
is a different issue. This is the issue of gerrymandering,
which usually applies to congressional districts or state legislature districts.
And jerry mandering is a very old phenomenon in America,
as evidenced by the fact that it was named for
Elbridge Gary, who was actually at the Constitutional Convention before
(22:00):
going on to become governor of Massachusetts. He drew a
congressional map that had a district that was so weird
looking it was looked like a salamander, and it was
called the Gary mander or the gerrymander, and thus we
have it. Now, what's going on with that is a
very different issue. Member electoral College votes are given to
whoever wins a statewide election, so just like governor or senator,
(22:23):
it's a statewide race, and so the issue of districts
within a state is irrelevant. But this issue is it's
one of those things, one of the many things we've
discovered in the last ten years where we find out
that what we thought were rules were only guidelines.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
To quote pirates of the Caribbean.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
So the guideline the practice was every ten years, as
called for in the Constitution, there would be a new census.
And after the census, when we knew what the new
population was of persons, by the way, not citizens, I
should say that the Constitution says persons. You would read
all the districts, and over the years of the decades,
(23:08):
as political parties, as I said, first sprang into being
and then became more and more powerful, those people realized
that they could district to their advantage. And that's gotten
much much worse in recent years decades for two reasons.
First of all, computers, you could say, for example, that Chicago,
(23:31):
where I live, is a Democratic town. We always knew
that the vote of Chicago would go to the Democratic candidate.
Now with computers, you can find out which blocks went
for them, which houses practically went for Democrats. So if
you were to draw, if you wanted to draw a
map that you could guarantee would maximize the number of
(23:56):
Democratic voters, as we have done in fact to a
great extent here in Illinois.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
You can do it. You can do it with these
computers and these mapping softwares.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
And the Robert Supreme Court has weighed in on this,
blessed their heart, and what they have said is that
you can't draw districts to deprive people of equal weight
(24:26):
as voters because of their race. Racial jerry manders are illegal,
but partisan jerry manders are fine, according to the Robert
Supreme Court. Right, So all a state has to do,
and this has happened many times to justify a jerrymander
that say, cuts up a significant black population in order
(24:51):
to dilute their vote so they can't vote for the
person that population would want to represent their particular interests
and say oh no, no, no, no, no, it's not it's
not a racial jerry manner, which it's a and jerrymander.
Those black people, they just vote for Democrats. We're not
screwing them over because they're black. No, no, no, we're
screwing them over because they're Democrats. And according to the
Robber Square, that's totally fine. Now, state courts have over
(25:13):
the last few years intervened because state constitutions have their
own provisions about the right to vote, although that's gotten
to be a battlefield as well to take there's as
actually an interesting case that's parallel the states of Wisconsin
in North Carolina. In the state of Wisconsin, a map
passed by the Republican legislature supermajority imposed Republican favored jerrymander
(25:37):
on the state of Wisconsin. However, the people of Wisconsin
got together and elected new members of the Supreme Court who,
unlike the prior Supreme courts, the no, no, no, no, no,
you can't do that, and they threw out those maps
on the instituted fairer maps. In the state of North Carolina,
the opposite thing happened. The Republican supermajority passed a very
Republican favored map. In fact, as evidence showed it a
(25:59):
particular trial, it was designed specifically to dilute the votes
of the black population of North Carolina. The state Supreme
Court said, no, no, no, you can't do it. It's
not democracy. One person won vote. Everybody should be able
to vote for the candidate of their choice. It shouldn't
be predetermined by politicians drawing maps. So then there was
a Supreme Court election in North Carolina which which took
(26:21):
two seats away from liberal nonpartisan yes fine, from the
Democratic candidates, and gave it to the Republicans. And what
do you know, the new Republican majority in North Carolina said,
you know, actually, now that we think about it, it
turns out those maps are fine. So generally speaking, both
sides do it. There's very little things you can do
(26:42):
about it, because the Supreme Court won't intervene, and the
state supreme courts tend now to be just as partisan
as the state legislator. So, for example, in Texas, the
chances of the state Supreme Corps, which is all appointed
by Republicans governors, the chances of them intervening in this
(27:03):
to say oh no, no, no, you can't do it
are minimal because to go back to my original point,
it's not a law that you have to do it
just once every ten years. It's just the way it's
always been done, because that's fair. If you don't care
about being fair, you can do what you want.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Thank you for indulging my digression. I appreciate that, Kathy.
We're going to get back to your question specifically. Does
the electoral college still serve us well today?
Speaker 2 (27:36):
No, not at all, although for different reasons, people have
known the electoral college is messed up for.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
A long long time.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
There have been many, many, many attempts to amend the
Constitution so as to eliminate it and go to a
popular election of the president, because, as I said, he's
the only officeholder that is not elected through popular majority.
In fact, in the nineteen sixties and late nineteen sixties,
Indiana Senator Birch Bay came so incredibly close to getting
(28:07):
rid of the electoral College. He convinced the House of
Representatives to pass an amendment, and they did by the
I think it's the three fourths majority necessary to pass
an amendment, but it was filibustered in the Senate by
Southern segregationists. Even after the passage of the Voting Rights
(28:27):
Act in the mid sixties and sixty five, Southern senators
knew that it is very hard for black people to
vote in their states, and thus they wanted the power.
They would rather have the power of the electoral College
than have to open up the vote to their actual population.
These days, the problem with the electoral college is very different,
(28:51):
and it's really simple to describe in that it makes
the vast majority of voters in America completely irrelevant, utterly irrelevant.
I live in Illinois. Illinois is a blue state. As
we say, now, sure I can vote for the Democrat
(29:14):
if I want. It's not going to make any difference.
The Democrat electors are going to win in the state
of Illinois. But it's really frustrating for Republicans in Illinois
because they don't matter at all. It doesn't care, nobody
cares what they want because they don't have any influence
in a presidential election. The same is true with Republicans
(29:36):
in California, or Democrats in Texas, or Democrats in South
Carolina increasingly in Florida, or Republicans in New York State,
or in Republicans of Vermont in the classic blue states,
none of their votes matter. And what that means is
none of their concerns matter unless they're rich. Right, donors
(29:57):
will always have a voice. But for the vast majority
of to use this example, Republican voters in California, whatever
they prefer doesn't matter. It's it's irrelevant. They're essentially disenfranchised.
If you are Republican living in California, you're a vote
for president does not matter. If you are a Democrat
living in Texas, you're a vote for president does not matter.
And that's bad, but it has a It has a
(30:21):
distorting effect on presidential politics. Obviously, it means that the
focus of the presidential campaigns is always going to be
on those swing states, those very few states whereby virtue
of a balance of populations, they could go either way,
thus swinging your Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, to a certain extent, Nevada, Arizona.
(30:43):
Those are the ones that only only so all of
the attention is given to those states. And if you
talk to anybody who lives in say Pennsylvania, during a
presidential campaign, they will tell you how incredibly annoying it
is that they're constantly deluged by everything, by ads and appearances.
And that's good for pennsylvan I guess, but why shouldn't
the people of New York State, which is right next
(31:03):
door get attention? But it also means that I think
our politics get really distorted. Assume for a minute that
Democrats in Texas, because of their cultural heritage and everything else,
are slightly more conservative than Democrats national. Assume for the
same argument that Republicans in California, for the same reasons
they live in California, are more liberal in general than
(31:26):
Republicans nationwide. Because those people are written out of the
presidential elections entirely, that potentially moderating influence has no effect. Right,
You could have that sort of more mainstream politics that
everybody demands that we need. If you simply empowered the
(31:49):
people who live in solid blue or solid red states,
all of them to vote, we would have truly national
elections for our national aw office, and everybody would be empowered.
And you have no idea what would happen. We've never
had an election without the electoral College. We don't know
(32:11):
what it would look like if Republicans in California knew
their vote would count, or Democrats in Texas or Democrats
in the Deep South. We don't know what they would
do if they knew their vote counted. I mean, for example,
the conventional wisdom of the twenty twenty four election is
that Kamala Harris lost because so many Democrats stayed home. Okay,
(32:33):
let's assume that's true. Would they have stayed home. Would
they have stayed home if they knew that their vote
actually counted. We'll never know, and we should know. I
think that the popular vote for a president and vice
president in this country would moderate our politics and would
make our choice of president far more reflective of the
(32:54):
nation as a whole than it has been ever.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Are there any pro so you laid out the cons
for the electoral college, you laid out the pros for
popular vote. Are there any pros you can think of
right now that the electoral college still has going in
its favor.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Well, the one you'll hear is that it gives the
small states disproportionate power, right. I mean, it makes sure
that they're not run roughshot over, and that to a
certain extent is true. It's also true in their representation
of Congress. As I'm sure you've heard, Wyoming, which has
a smaller population than Los Angeles County. Maybe even the
(33:38):
city of Los Angeles I haven't checked recently has two senators.
That seems unfair to me anyway, but there's nothing we
can do about that. The senator is here to stay.
But I think that the small state argument falls apart
when you realize again, yeah, Wyoming gets a disproportionate say,
(34:01):
because of the electoral College. They their electoral votes are
a higher proportion of the total electoral votes votes than
their population is a proportion of the national population, so
they get a lift. But at the same time, the
entire you know, all the Democrats in Wyoming or Montana,
(34:23):
they're completely irrelevant. So sure you'd lose that sort of
boost of influence you get in Wyoming or Montana, but
you'd also get some You'd all of a sudden, the
people of Missoula, for example, which is a pretty liberal place,
would be able to have some small influence in a
presidential election, at least as much as their neighbors. And
(34:43):
that to me, this from the perspective of Montana, say,
should carry a lot of weight, unless, of course, you
are a rock rib Republican and you don't want the
Democrats in Montana to have any influence. So I think,
just in terms of fairness, the idea of empowering every
individual vastly outweighs this notion of small states having being
(35:07):
run roughshod over.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
It's unlikely that we'll go to a popular vote.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Right.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Seventeen states have national Popular Vote legislation that's become law, right,
and that reflects two hundred and nine electoral votes. So
these are but these are mostly blue states, right, And
there's something Oh, go ahead.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Yeah, And just to explain to your listeners, this is
something that once birch Bay's amendment failed, he'd signed up
for the National Popular Vote Compact. And remember I said,
under the design of the Constitution, any state can assign
can choose electoral votes any way they want. Right, you
can have the legislature do it. You can draw lots
whatever you want. Most states do it by whoever whatever
(35:48):
slate wins the popular vote in your state. The National
Popular Vote Compact is an idea where states agree that
their electoral votes go to the winner of the national
popular vote whatever their state did. So, again, to take
an example, that's extremely unlikely if Wyoming were to sign
up to this and in a presidential election, Wyoming goes
(36:12):
eighty percent for the Republican, but the national vote goes
to the Democrat. Then Wyoming would sign its electors to
the Democratic candidate, or would technically select the electors who
were pledged to the Democratic candidate. That's a good idea,
I mean, it's a way to doing an end run
around the requirements for a constitutional amendment, the only other
(36:33):
way to do it. There are a lot of unanswered questions.
Even if this did work, I mean, all of a sudden,
the popular vote becomes really important because it's going to
decide the president, but we're still going to be dealing
with a system of states controlling their own elections. We
(36:54):
go back to that first problem that they thought the
electoral College would solve, which is that how do you
make sure the Pennsylvania doesn't goose its vote to get
more popular votes for the president. Well, you just tell
them they can do whatever you want. But they only get,
however many electoral votes. So all of a sudden, we'd
have a system where the individual popular votes directly elected
(37:15):
the president, right, individual states, I mean, but we would
have a state by state system of counting those votes
state by state laws, and as we know, sadly to
this day, voting is not a constitutional right. It can
be diminished, it can be taken away. They're in the
fifth Amendment. You can take away somebody's right to vote
(37:38):
if they commit a felony. I'm sorry, that's not the
fifth to fifteenth. So the problem is, again it would
raise all these other questions that a constitutional amendment would
by its nature have to solve and to be passed.
But I would say probably if you were to let
met it this way, to institute a national popular vote
(38:01):
through the compact, or to require the kind of national
cooperation and willingness to give up immediate advantage for the
long term health of the nation that we just haven't
seen in this country for a very long time.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
So we.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Can't do it in small things, we can't do it
in big things.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
Yeah, and it's quite terrifying. And one of the things
that's going on, as I'm sure you know, is right
now the Republican Party, it wasn't always a Republican party.
It is now used to be the Democratic Party way
back when is using the anti majoritarian aspects of our constitution,
(38:46):
most especially the Senate and the Supreme Court's role to
basically rule as a minority in this country. That is,
the things they're doing are not very popular.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
Holes tell us.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Certainly this last election, President Trump did in fact win
the popular vote by a small margin. But nonetheless they're
using these mechanisms to impose a vision on the country
that in its specifics is not particularly popular. And as
we've also seen and here again we returned to the
thing in Texas, they're also really intent on using the
(39:24):
power they have to cement the power into the future
to make sure that their lack of support for their
specific policy ideas doesn't prevent them from retaining the power
to carry them out.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
I asked this final question with the knowledge that as
a historian, historians are terrible predicting the future.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
That's why the historians, right, it's history.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
Yeah, so do you think the electoral college is here
to stay?
Speaker 2 (39:57):
The only way it would go away is if in
one of two circumstances. One is that the party that
at that moment had an advantage through its use. Right
now it's the Republican Party. It wasn't always it was
the Democratic Party. Within my lifetime. If that party agrees
to give up that advantage, that's unlikely. The other possibility
(40:21):
is that both sides decide that it's so bad that
it just has to be done away with, which is
what almost happened with Birch Bay's amendment, because it came
out of the election of sixty eight. In nineteen sixty eight,
George Wallace came close to winning enough electoral votes I
can't remember the number exactly so as to deprive the
(40:44):
other two candidates, Nixon or Humphrey, of a majority. And
if that had happened a couple one more state, maybe two,
maybe two more, depending the election would have gone to
the House of Representatives. And that is something that's never happened, well,
sort of never happened eighteen seventy six, whole other thing.
John Quincy Adams, Yeah, yeah, it has You're right, it
(41:06):
has happened before, but it hasn't happened in say, modern America.
And that was so horrifying. It was so horrifying to
bird Bay in a lot of other people that this
Southern segregationist almost threw the the election into the into
the House of Representatives, that he was able to generate
a tremendous amount of support for doing away with this system.
That almost led to that disastrous outcome until he was
(41:27):
stopped by the other Southern segregationists.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
And so this was also the plan, Peter.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
This is also one of the plans mentioned by the
Trump campaign. How so to send it well, because yes,
wrapping up by propping up r FK, they could potentially
throw it into the House. And yeah, of course, the
the Republicans hold the legislatures. Yes, legislature gets.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
A vote, right, And the way it works, if I'm
not mistaken, is and they this is part of their
plan in twenty twenty. What I believe Peter Navaro called
the Greek the Eastman's plan, and what Peter Navarro called
the Green Bay sweep is that if you could just
disqualify enough electoral votes from certain swing states, you can
(42:16):
create enough confusion that it would be thrown to the
House of Representatives. And there every delegation gets a vote,
not every member. So even though Democrats might have had
a majority of members, they did not have a majority
of delegations, and the majority of delegations would have elected
or rather re elected President Trump.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
Yeah, that's bad too.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
I guess that the problem is is it's hard at
this point to imagine a potential outcome like what happened
in sixty eight that would be sufficiently horrifying to a
majority bipartisan by partisan majority in this country that they
would step into prevent it from happening. That's the thing
I don't see happening. And because of that, I don't know.
(42:57):
I just wish that again. And this is an accident
of history and not thing to do with their particular character.
At this moment that the Republicans who see who believe
that the electoral College is to their advantage and it
is right now, I wish they would see that it
would be even more to their advantage and their voters
to do away with it because of what I said before,
(43:17):
because of those disenfranchised Republicans, and there are so many
of them. There were more voters for Trump in California
this last election than there were in West Virginia. In
California or it didn't matter. Imagine if their votes mattered,
If all of those people in Orange County or the
Inland Empire, or the northeastern counties of California, those Republican areas,
(43:41):
if their vote counted, Imagine how well great that would
be for those Republican voters. I and you know the
same thing. We'd go for Democrats in other states, and
you'd hope in a rational world that the Republican Party
would see that they'd respond to the pressure from those
people make sure our votes count and pressed.
Speaker 3 (44:01):
For that reform.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
But like a lot of very smart and useful ideas,
I don't see that having a lot of life right now.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
Producer James wants to end on a positive note. Oh please,
Is there anything hopeful you're seeing now about anything? Even
non politics?
Speaker 2 (44:19):
Oh gosh, jeez, it's a tough question, and you know,
everybody returns to small things. My kids are doing great.
But in terms of national politics, I do think that,
as is often the case in any crisis, people are
being awoken, awakened, awakened to the reality that they face
(44:44):
in terms of the country that they want, the country
that they have, and the country that we are rapidly
becoming unless something changes. To quote Barack Obama, we are
the change that we're looking for. Vout somebody else, I mean,
nobody coming to save us. And I do think that
people see that and know it, and I think that
(45:08):
the Internet is far less the blessing than we all
thought it would be when we when they first thought
of it. But at the same time, it's allowing people
to understand what's happening across the country in a way
that is inspiring a lot of people, and on both
sides to take action. People are responding.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
I mean.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
One of the things that I have said as I've
gone around the country and talked about the constitution and democracy,
which in general I'm a big fan of both, is
that as long as you have democracy and it's a vibrant,
effective democracy i e. It actually works, You vote and
the winner of the vote gets the whole power for
(45:49):
the limited period of time that they have, and the
other side respects that victory, which used to be the norm.
As long as you have democracy, there's nothing that you
can can't fix. There's no other problem that you can't fix.
If the government has gone really wrong in a direction,
a democracy, if required, will provide the corrective. If the
(46:13):
government is doing something that the majority of the people dislike,
then the majority of people will fix it. And that's
the only hope, and as long as that's possible, hope remains.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
I've been talking to Peter Segel, host of MPR's Wait
Wait Don't Tell Me, a fellow historian as well. Check
out his PBS show from a few years back, Constitution USA.
It's got the Constitution and Harley Davidson's what else do
you need? Peter. It's such treat to have you on
American History Hotline today.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
Thank you. It's been a pleasure. I always love talking
about this stuff. And you know, everybody get out there
and vote. Everybody, get involved. Everybody make your feelings known.
Everybody make your opinion known. That's your obligation as a citizen.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
You've been listening to American History Hotline, a production of
iHeart Podcasts and Scratch Track Productions. The show's executive producer
is James Morrison. Our executive producers from iHeart are Jordan
Runtall and Jason English. Original music composed by me Bob Crawford.
Please keep in touch. Our email is Americanhistoryhotline at gmail
(47:28):
dot com. If you like the show, please tell your
friends and leave us a review in Apple Podcasts. I'm
your host, Bob Crawford. Feel free to hit me up
on social media to ask a history question or to
let me know what you think of the show. You
can find me at Bob Crawford Base. Thanks so much
(47:48):
for listening, See you next week,
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