The League of Women Voters of the Homewood-Flossmoor Area (LWVHFA) heard a presentation by David Brodnax Sr. about the history of the Electoral College at the Flossmoor Village Hall on Oct. 16.
of Women Voters event in Flossmoor Village Hall on Oct. 16.
(Chris Weber/H-F Chronicle)
Brodnax is a history professor and history department chair at Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights and an adjunct professor at the University of Iowa College of Law. His talk was titled “A Small Number of Persons: A Brief and Critical History of the Electoral College.”
Brodnax explained why he believes the Electoral College system has always been problematic for U.S. democracy. He said, “The will of the people is, at best, often in peril and, at worst, sometimes just completely subverted.”
During the talk, Brodnax covered the following key points:
- The framers of the Constitution did not intend for the president to be chosen by direct popular vote. Instead, they created the Electoral College as a compromise between different proposals for electing the president.
- Each state has a number of electoral votes equal to its representation in Congress. In most states, the candidate who wins the popular vote receives all of the state’s electoral votes.
- When the Electoral College was adopted, there were fewer states, and electors had the authority to override the people.
- The Electoral College historically has disenfranchised Black voters, particularly in southern states with a high percentage of Black residents.
- The Electoral College system incentivizes candidates to focus their campaigns on a few swing states rather than the entire country.
Brodnax concluded his presentation by arguing that the Electoral College is an outdated system that should be replaced with a direct popular vote. “If you look at all the issues, and you go all the way back to the 1800s, the one that’s had the most bills introduced is abolishing the electoral college,” Brodnax said. References cited by the National Archives support this statement.
Because the Electoral College process is in the Constitution, a constitutional amendment is required to change it. A constitutional amendment is ratified when three-fourths of the state legislatures or state conventions approve it after a proposed amendment is passed by a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress.
“There is a reason why the Constitution only has 27 amendments,” Brodnax said. “It isn’t easy.”
There is also an effort called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which is an agreement between a group of states, including Illinois, to award their electoral college votes to the winner of the national popular vote. The agreement has been signed by 17 states and Washington, D.C. None of these states are swing states, and all have awarded electoral college votes to Democrats in recent elections.
“I’m not saying it’s legal or constitutional. I’m not saying it is unconstitutional,” said Brodnax. “If it ever came to where all 50 states signed this and then it actually went into effect, we would definitely have some lawsuits.”
Four times in US history, the winner of the Electoral College was not the winner of the popular vote. The elections in 2000 and 2016 are the most recent examples.
The League of Women Voters (LWV) is actively campaigning against the Electoral College as part of its One Person, One Vote Campaign. According to Jessica Groen, a co-director of the LWVHFA, the effort began after one of the most successful attempts to change the presidential election process was halted by a filibuster in 1969.
One of the LWV’s goals is to educate voters about the problematic nature of the Electoral College system and advocate for its abolishment in favor of a direct popular vote. They believe this change is necessary to ensure that presidential elections are genuinely democratic.
After the presentation, many audience members commented that they had learned a lot of information about the Electoral College at the event.
