Transcripts For CSPAN3 Lectures In History Electoral College 20240712

So today well talk about the Electoral College, what it is, how it works and why most scholars kind of hate the Electoral College and its among the Political Science set which homely youve had so far and you get a fullthroated argument against the Electoral College and it is a useful, instructive book because lays out all of the common arguments for it, as well which is helpful for allowing each person to sort of make up their mind about what they think about this institution generally speaking. So this is really i do a whole week on this one because its how we like the president and few americans fully understand the process. At the very least if you take a course in the american presidency you should walk away understanding how this process we use to select our chief executive officer work, but also because it is really important in how it structures how elections turn out. Just how we started our discussion by president ial nominations by discussing the history of the nominations processes and taking a relatively deep dive into the process rules and the rule nominations today, we should start out president ial elections the same way by taking an even deeper dive into the single most important institutional process th to how we select a president. George c. Edwards Electoral College book. Im sure hes made a good amount of money on it, by now, its in its third edition, after all. In it he explains how the Electoral College works and he lays out key problems and lays out the typical arguments in Electoral College, but today what we will focus how the system works and what the Electoral College tended to look like. Next time we turn towards arguments about pros and cons of the Electoral College and sort of consequences for the Electoral College for how Candidates Campaign and how the president ial elections tend to shake out. Today all i want to accomplish is how to fully understand the system where it came from and how it works because it tends to be more invoofrled than people think. Okay. Why do we have the Electoral College in the first place . Well, a lot of that stems from there just being a desire among many of the delegates at the Constitutional Convention to compromise and come to some sort of resolution regarding setting out what the terms would be for their new constitutional government. If you recall we talked about this earlier in the semester, some of the overriding concerns from the delegates is they needed to come to a compromise and produce a new document, a new constitutional document by the time they were done in philadelphia which meant all of them were somewhat inclined toward compromise. There was a real fear at the time that if the convention failed to produce a reformed political system for the United States the country would splinter into multiple regional parts and theyre easily conquered or reconquered by your buyers, and eyeing the United States for political dysfunction. That inclination to compromise led to the acquiescence to the vehement interests of smaller state interests. They wanted to ensure that those smaller states as well as slave states wanted to ensure that their voices were amplified in the new governmental system and pushed pretty hard and pretty consistently on that point all throughout the debates on most things including on the debates over how to select the president. So i told you during the second week of class, most of the debate about the president ial offers at the Constitutional Convention centered on how the president would be selected or elected. They spent 22 combined days debating this specific topic and took more than 30 different votes on 30 competing proposals and amendments to proposals about how they would do this election. And throughout those 22 days there were three options debated for how we would elect the president and essentially there were three main camps without some other various subcamps and compromise vote proposals and there were three main avenues advocated by different delegates at the convention. One option was to have the president selected by congress that is either the house or the senate would actually meet to consider candidates and cast votes to directly select the executive. This would sound a lot like a parliamentary system where the program is or was a member of the legislature and is designated as their leader by the Majority Party or coalition and assumed in executive office. Another option that was laid out there was that the president should not be elected by the congress and by the state legislatures and that each of the state legislatures should take a vote on the preferred candidate and the states that got the support from the most states would become the president. Then a third main option that was considered was from a subset of members of the convention who really wanted a direct popular vote for the president , largely arguing that that was the only way to ensure that the president ial office had any sort of separation in order to be dominated by the state say thes and the congress. Alexander hamiltonon made a proposal i was i would choose a positive for life and pick a new one until the president died and there were ideas thrown out there about who would be the president and how we would get to the president and there were certain concerns that drove the tenor of these debates around these various options. In other words, there were certain things that the founders were concerned about achieving or avoiding through the method of president ial election. Ill run through some of these. One of these concerns was legislative intrigue and making sure there was president ial independence. President ial intrigue was to select certain president s for certain selfinterests or reasons and that is to select a president that would empower those specific members of Congress Rather than selecting a president who would, you know, do a good job or achieve certain policy aims. And this ties into president ial independence because there was concern if the selection of the president was driven by congressional intrigue then you would have the reality that the president whoever was selected would be entirely dependent on the congress to maintain their time in office, that because you were going to have this language about impeachment in the constitution, congressional selection would ultimately mean that the congress could lure over the presidency and threat tone impeach the president every time it didnt do what congress wanted because it doesnt have the power to put someone in the office or remove him from office which was seen as too dependent on the conference. The president had some separation and independence from the legislature which were two things that worked against direct election by the congress. Another concern was voter parochialism in that the founders were concerned that the country was too large and that people would be too uninformed of their potential leaders from any other states other than their own so essentially that if you did direct election by state which you would get would be if were talking about the 13 states that would choose 13 different president s and youd essentially be deadlocked with 13 candidates coming in with a kwaus i tie. These people wanted the public to have some voice, but they wanted a system that would force the consideration of candidates with a Broader Market character and reputation. So they were concerned you had to do something beyond just direct election in order to get to a place where people would be looking beyond their own state borders. Founders were also concerned about there being a need for intermediaries with the selection of the presidency, while a lot of the delegates wanted direct selection and were advocates of direct democracy over the selection of the president , other founders were less excited about that and were concerned that if the people selected the president directly that they would make unwise choices and that you needed to protect against tumult and disorder as some of them put it and so you needed some sort of system that would have intermediaries between the public and the election and the president. These next two concerns voteser parochialism and the need for intermediaries pushed back against direct selection. Of course, there were fears of president ial power, but there were different beliefs about what would allow for a more empowered or less empowered president. Some delegates thought the direct election of the president would make the president too powerful because then the president would be the only to claim to have the full mantel of the public and they were too powerful if thaey were indirecty selected as well. Small states wanted to be sure that their voices were heard in the new government. Under the art ikss of onfederation, as you may know, small states were able to dominate the process because every state regardless of population side, and most decisions first i thought, well, the articles for anything to be in grate for anything to happen. And and outsided power given that the population lived in four states at the time of the artic else articles of confederation. They gave the small states a bigger voice than they would have under a direct election though they had a smaller voice than you might have from some form of congressional selection and some legislative election. Small states werent happy with the compromise and these well talk about in a bit when the Electoral College fails and the house of representatives selects the president with the state and that was a key carrot given to the small states to get them to sign on to the Electoral College agreement in the first place because many founders thought the Electoral College would never actually produce a majority winner after George Washington and that the highways of raptives were there was the ensure that they werent states in other parts of the contusion, as we know. Upon thereupon is a threefifths compromise that counted each slavement and for the purpose of allocating congress sing fishlly, and they were sent to move that vote. And they were concerned with seeing some sort of system that reflected congressional apportionment back to the president and they would have a larger voice and president ial selection relative to their voting population, as well. Finally, the shortterm concerns there was fatigue, the Convention Del gatds wanted to get out of there with a new system. They were concerned that failure was the worst possible option and that led to a lot of people who wanted a different outcome to acquiesce to the concerns of slave states, small states or other people that had really strong opinions and who were willing to walk away from the convention if they didnt get what they wanted. So those concerns ended up with an Electoral College system which is a messy compromise. The Electoral College did not achieve anyones ideals for what the election of the president would be, but it did reflect those key concerns on the previous slide. It gave each faction something that they wanted, a popular vote punled through the states and that allocated the states some power in giving congress some final stay, but no one was fully happy with it, but it was something that nobody was upset enough about to walk away from the convention over. Plenty of delegates walked away from the convention and they had the final document and went home, but none of them walked away over the Electoral College. They walked away over other broader issues, usually over congressional apportionment or Something Like that. Before we move on to running through how the Electoral College work trs start from sta finish does anybody have any questions they want answers to in terms of clarification or otherwise . Which Founding Fathers or which group were in favor of direct popular vote . Its hard to categorize them in any way other than to say the ones that were more committed to more of a direct tell democrat see, and they didnt come from any, like, specific parts of the country. They randomly distributed and the leader of that sort of faction and these were the people that were lead satisfied with the constitution in many respects, but the leader of that was george mason who was upset from day one at the convention because he was hoping to go there and legislatively drive tone had a direct public voice and he was sort of throughout the convention appalled and over and over again those ideals were compromised away toward delegates who were concerned about more immediate power concerns for specific constituencies or states. Does that make sense . Yeah. Totally. Thank. Youd have to read James Madisons notes to pull out who those people were individually. Yeah. Yeah. Mason work hard and shaped the system to be more democratic than it otherwise might have been because he was very influential and pushed really hard and refused to seen it in the end, but he made it look a lot better relative to his preferences than it could have because he was dogged in his determination. Other questions . I had a question if thats okay. Yeah. So im pretty familiar with the threefifths com from myself, but i was curious how did it come to 3 5 because thats super specific. Super specific. I know why it is, but i dont know why 3 5. I dont know why specifically 3 5 like so many things in the convention, we have sort of limited note taking on the nature of the debates and it var ed from moment to moment because there were a handful of people who kept a journal or diary during it and most of those are spotty and you might have the intended election today. James madison took about as complete notes as we being, but it was just him scribbling 18 hours a day while things were going on and he didnt have it captured at any one moment and they were debating things like a 3 5 compromise and not going over the different specific fractions thrown out. 3 5 must have sounded good enough to everyone and thats often how things worked at the convention is how things worked is that they would decide that that number sounded satisfactory to everyone and why twoyear terms for the house and someone proposed forward and thats too much and thats not long enough and someone said two and thats good. And it was just a matter of the south and the Southern States being, okay, getting wed rather the south came with the proposal that slaves counted as full individuals for apportionment which increased their power in the congress. And then there were some members who wanted the slaves not to count it all. 3 5 i think was good enough for everyone to say fine or enough people to say fine and why 3 5 remains a mystery unless someones done really good historical work that i dont know about. Other questions . So lets run through how the Electoral College works step by step from 30,000 feet and what the outcomes look like, and 1789 and how does it work right now. So right now you have 538 electoral votes as part of the college and in any given Election Year, and it is very simple. Each state gets two which is the number of senators we have and plus the number of house seats they have. So utah has the members, and so it has six electoral votes and the Electoral College and another state that has ten house members would have 12 in the electoral votes and the Electoral College and this way it is almost roughly proportional to the state by population, and waited a bit, and they get the twoseat boost no matter how small they are and c consequently they ratcheted down a bit and the district of columbia gets three votes no matter what, under the constitutional amendment prior to the i dont remember now, maybe the 1970s the district of columbia didnt get to vote in president ial elections and didnt have any votes in the Electoral College and that was an amendment tacked on that d. C. Would get three which at some point would become awkward because d. C. May be large enough to have the regular apportionment scheme, but it would still be locked into three such as the life of washington, d. C. , of always being under or nonrepresented in the government along with puerto rico and various other parts of the United States. To win, you have to have a majority of the vote which is is 270. You noticed that 538 is the total number of votes so you can have a tie. It is possible to have the Electoral College come out to 269 to 269. Thats a mignightmare for everybody, but you need 270 to become president. It doesnt matter if you have more than your opponent. So if you have three candidates getting electoral votes its split in that someone gets a majority and nobody wins at the Electoral College stage. Exactly how many votes each state gets gets reallocated every 10 years just like we reallocate house seats based on the census every ten years because the formula is simply two plus the number of house seats, so if utah were to pick up a seat in the coming census which it is unlukely to do, but if it were it can go from having six electoral votes to seven and other states can gain or lose seats in the house of representatives. Once all is said and done votes are cast by the 538 electors in order for there to be a win are decided. This is essentially what the outcome of the process can look like. This is what we call a cartograph from the electoral vote from the Electoral College. There are things to notice here. One, i like to show this because it shows the size of the states baseded on the number of votes they have rather than the land area or population and this is an accurate repgz of the size of each state within the Electoral College and it allows you more clearly to see the decisiveness or nondice ofness of the outcome and they show a landslide on here and you can see the thing lights up entirely in red, but in a close election like 2016 you see fairly close sizes between the blue and the red states because there was a fairly close election. Something else youll notice in here that there are a number of people here who got electoral votes who are not Hillary Clinton or donald trump because under the constitution and well talk about this in a minute, under the constitution the Electoral College lektsoelector vote for whoever they want as long as theyre alive and natural citizen of the United States. The 324 votes for clinton and 224 for trump, you see down here at the bottom, colin powell received three votes from the state of washington and they received one vote and washington just wasnt having it with this election and rand paul received rand paul received a vote in texas as did john kasich and Bernie Sanders received one vote from an elector in hawaii. These people are called faithless electors as well talk about in a minute. How do they select . The process starts for any Election Year well before election day in which potential electors are nominated to stand on the ballot. This nominations process of who will potentially be the 535 electors selected by each state is up to each state and typically, what most states do is allow the state Party Organizations to nominate the sufficient number of electors. So again if were talking about utah, the state Democratic Party will nominate six people to stand on the ballot as the democratic electors and the state Republican Party will nominate six people to stand on the ballot as the republican electors. These are the people that youre actually voting for. Who are these people typically . Who gets nominated to be an Electoral College elector. But for the constitution the only rule is they cannot be someone holding a federal office, so a member of congress, the president , cabinet secretary, anyone holding federal elected or appointed office cannot be an elector and otherwise it can be any ablebodied adult and typically they are party, insiders, and donors and the state party and its whatever you typically a reward for having worked hard for that states party. Now you get to have this semiceremonial role where after election day if your partys candidate wins in that state you get to cast the electoral votes. We often refer to these people as a slate of electors because as well talk about in a minute most electors and theyre elected in full or as none. On election day, these people have been nominated, and the preelection day or vote by mail version of voting that youre doing this year. Youre not actually voting for the candidate for president or Vice President even though thats whose name is on the ballot. Who you are actually voting for is for one or the other slate of electors. Thats the actual outcome that comes from this election so if you vote for joe biden you are voting for the six democratic electors and if youre voting for dmitri you aonald trump you for election day. It takes place on the first tuesday after the first monday in november and its been true since 1945. Before 1845, you had states voting over the course of nine months to select the president which was somewhat chaotic which is why congress set the standard election day. There is no constitutional guarantee that each state selects their electors by popular vote. To these in present day all 50 states plus the district of columbia have popular statewide votes to select who the select the electors for the Electoral College and thats not guaranteed because it hasnt really been challenged in a while and its feasible under the constitution, and its the 18th or 19th century, and some states had the state legislature to select the electors for the Electoral College and its only been since the 1840s or 1850s, and its been routine that most states use the popular vote to select the electors. If all likelihood, someone would bring a lawsuit in court and probably the courts would guarantee a popular vote for president within each state, but there are certainly no guarantee because no one has tested this in a while. In some states the names of the electors that you are voting to put in the Electoral College in some states their names are actually on the ballot next to the president s name or the president ial candidates names, but in most states they are not. You dont know who the people are unless you can find it in whatever state Governmental Office in the state of utah and its the Lieutenant Governor and whatever state office manages the elections and someone should go and look and see if they can find the names of the electors for utah and the Lieutenant Governors office or somewhere else, but you wouldnt know it because it will say donald trump and mike pence and joe biden and Kamala Harris and you might never know who the electors are unless you paid attention to december and january. All, but two states then select their electors as a winner takes all vote and they receive aggregate votes in the state and gets 100 of their electors from the state appointed to the Electoral College. There are two exceptions to this, maine and nebraska. In maine and nebraska there is first two electors handed out to the statewide winner and then one elector handed out per winner in each of the congressional districts. So sometimes you see made in nebraska the votes for instance 2016 three of mains votes go to Hillary Clinton and one go to donald trump. In 2008 you had four of nebraskas Electoral College votes go to john mccain and one to barack obama from the Third District of nebraska. You have your hand raised. Do you have a question . Is there a reason why inversions happen why a president can win the popular vote and win the Electoral College due to the fact that winner take all or faithless selectors . Thats never caused a person to lose the Electoral College when they won the popular vote. Sometimes its because of specifically because of winner take although there are other times when the popular vote and the Electoral College lined up whereas if youd had every state do what maine and nebraska does then the popular vote would have won the Electoral College and one example of this is 1976 whereas where jimmy carter won the popular vote narrowly where if youd done it with the maine and nebraska approach, gerald ford would have stayed president. The main reason they dont line up often is because the Electoral College is not directly proportional to the votes in each state for a variety of reasons that well talk about next time. The big one being that every state gets a base of two electoral votes and then its proportional only after, but also as well talk about next time, the number of electoral votes is not sensitive to the actual turnout in the state and you have states that have a high turnout and some states that have a low turnout and states dont gain or lose electoral votes based on the actual number of people who show up and vote. So it heavily skews the relationship between total actual votes coming out of a state and electoral votes coming out of a state. Does that make sense . Yeah. Okay. So thats what happens on election day, but its not over yet because even once election day happens and within a couple of weeks typically most states certifies and the winners certify who the electors are from each state though this Election Year we may see some of that get delayed quite a bit because you might not necessarily know you might not have the votes pushed back for the certification process, but witness all of the votes have been counted and the winners certified in each state then the actual electors meet on the first monday after the second wednesday in december. Thats if that isnt confusing enough basically they meet in the middle of december on a monday. Usually the second or third monday in december. Congress has set the state by statute. It could be at a different date. Congress can change when the electors meet at any time. Thats just a fuhrly congressional decision. It used to be later, now its earlier. They all meet in their respective state capitals, usually in some Governmental Office. In utah they usually meet in the state utah building to cast their votes and to this day they still cast large, floppy paper ballots that arent very fancy. These days they have the names of the winners being printed on them and they are these big, fancy parchmenttype ballots that the electors sign and fill out and then they vote two times. They have two ballots now. They vote and one ballot for who they think should be president and they vote the second ballot for the person that they think should be Vice President and they voted for two people and then those ballots are certified by a stateors fishl and mailed to the president of the senate who can tell me who the president of the senate is . The Vice President. Particular nickly they mail them to the Vice President which can get awkward when the Vice President is also on the ballot or in the case of al gore, super awkward for him as the process plays out because the president of the senate plays a key role in the certification process here. So is that it . No. Were still not done. The votes have been mailed and certified and mailed by the congress and nothing is official until Congress Counts the votes. Specifically they count the vote at 1 00 p. M. January 6 chth is ve very, very specific. They dont count if january 6th is a sunday. Then they kick it to the next day. What happens is the president of the senate, theres the Vice President again, presides over a jint session of congress meaning the members of the house and the senate and this is the new congress. This is the Incoming Congress so the congress that was on november 3rd year will actually start starts coming in on the third and they might have a new balance of power and then that new Congress First official course of business is to count the electoral votes in a joint which is full four to six members of the house and the senate are read truly they are stacked up in envelopes on the house deus and they take turns opening them, reading off the tallies and handing them to the clerk of the house to be verified and then the Vice President announces and certifies those votes as having counted. Congress can reject or challenge ballots that are sent to it by the states. If both a representative and a senator object. That is basically this process involves and they open the ballot and they start from the beginning and they do it in alphabet cal order by state. So say its alabamas turn and they open it up and they read the ballots and they say alabamas has i remember how many electoral votes alabama has, six or seven electoral votes and it casts all six or seven of its electoral votes for donald j. Trump for president and mike pence for president and hand it over to the clerk who reads it again and hands it over to the Vice President who waits to see if anyone objects and if a house member or senator both raise their hand and object to those ballots and is that a formal challenge to them and the house and the senate evolve back into their representative chambers if both the house and the senate agree to object and reject those states ballots, and it is literally thrown out and it doesnt count and this has happened at times in American History when the Electoral College ballots have been thrown out by the congress. This is the part where Congress Really gets to be the ultimate Decision Maker if congress was unified and felt like it they can throw out the votes and make its own choice on january 6th and theres nothing keeping you from doing it though its never done it that way, and its thrown out votes and its dealt with periods of time when no one won a majority in the Electoral College and was compelled to step in and make a choice and its never aggressively used that power to date. Are we done yet . No. 270 accepted votes for one person for the president and Vice President for the winner and they decide if nobody gets 270. The house selects the president among the top five finishers in the Electoral College with each state getting one vote. It basically means that each of the states evolve into their delegations. So if youre like utah the utah delegation sit down and decide who theyll vote for with their one vote and other states do the same. They get to decide their own internal mechanisms and it is decision is unanimous and they dont cast a vote and they have to pick among the top five finishers with the Electoral College for president meaning they can only vote for people who received votes in the Electoral College and they can only vote for people in the top five receiving votes and this was how the founders thought that they would select a president after washington. And no one would win the Electoral College and there would be one to ten people who received Electoral College votes and they would go to the congress and congress would certify the votes or throw out some of their abnormalities and then they would sit down and decide among the top five finishers who should be president and then they would vote and do it. It never really worked that way. It only kind of worked that way one time, and it was for an odd reason. But its never worked that way it hasnt really worked out that way because the Electoral College has been more unanimous than they ever thought. It selects the Vice President among the top five finishers for vp and they get his or her own vote and whoever gets a majority of the vote in each case win, but you need an absolute majority which means if you have a burch of states in the house that deadlock and dont cast votes and no one gets 26 votes and among the 50 states in the house and they dont have a president elect. It is much easier to get a majority in the senate and you are more likely to get a Vice President ial election. So is this person president now . No. Now there is a gap and on january 6th, you get a president elect and that person is sworn in until january 20th and theyre sworn in on january 20th and they only hold the inauguration ceremony that day if its not a sunday, and there are contingencies built in here if no president and if only the Vice President has been certified as the Vice President elect and the house is deadlocked on who the president should be and some other disaster occurs where the president elect dies or becomes incapacitated, the Vice President becomes president of the United States on january 20th and congress can then subsequently still pick the president up to some amount of time thats unclear and in the meantime the Vice President becomes president and if the Vice President is also not certified and say congress certifies the president or the Vice President , and supposedly the speaker of the house becomes president and then its never occurred and its never been tested and its been decided by statute and may very well be unconstitutional. We dont know. A couple of important details. Electors are not necessarily bound by the popular vote in the state again. It is important to say that you could be a republican elector in the state where the republican nominee wins and you decide to vote for someone else and who we saw in 2016 and in most selections they saw the selector, and there are some contingencies here and they require them to take an oath with the nominee, and you probably dont do this, and some states require electors to be faithful with penalties and mostly financial penalties and in fact, the Supreme Court this year upheld those state penalty requirements, but at the same time an elector could say some states like colorado will fine you tens of thousands of dollars and might put you in jail if youre an Electoral College elector and you vote against the certified popular vote winner in your state, but your vote still counts against the popular votes, the wishes of the population in your state is you maybe find and go to jail, but if you believe that strongly, perhaps you would still vote that way and your vote would get counted by the congress that way. Any other question on what happens if someone dies during this process . This is one of the most horrifying aspects of our system because in some respects its okay, and in other respects its a complete nightmare. So if a candidate dies before election day on november 3rd thats okay because the parties can nominate somebody else and they automatically replace the dead candidate on the ballot and if ballots have already been printed say joe biden died tomorrow in all likelihood the Democratic Party would nominate Kamala Harris to take his place as the president ial nominee and they would nom name someone else to be Vice President and in most states the ballots have been printed so if you were going to vote for Kamala Harris, not dead joe biden youd have to vote for dead joe biden, but your vote would count for Kamala Harris. Thats relatively smooth because the parties can nominate someone within a matters, and i would make a choice and its assumed that theyd pick a vp. If the president elect shows up a polling praise, and it isnt the first monday after the second wednesday in december and say one of them dies, the electors can now have whatever they want. They can vote for dead joed bien and thai can go for whoever they feel like and presumably they can vote for the Vice President or or the Vice President elect and then they would pick whoever the hell they wanted to be v. P. And it would be chaotic and then the senate would pick a Vice President and thats how it would work. The problem really comes in if the Electoral College has already voted and mailed their ballots to congress and say the president elect from the Electoral College dies on christmas. This is a prior problem because now those ballots have been cast and congress is compelled to throw them out because they cannot, by law, elect someone who is dead which means now congress has to pick somebody, the house of representatives has to pick somebody who finished in the top five in the Electoral College, which may just be the person the only person who may have received electoral votes for president in the Electoral College might be the person who lost the election, in which case you would have a lot of house members who would refuse to vote, and then you would have no president elect and the Vice President would become president. This is really a nightmare if both the president and Vice President ial wehner die between december 15th and january 6th congress would have it though, in a position to where they dont want to vote for the losers to come up, and the pro term of the senate who is likely to be Patrick Leahy and chuck grassley, both of whom are extremely old and we dont know if thats a constitutional decision. Thats a huge oversight in the system, by the way. That there are all sorts of contingencies where if a candidate dies it could be fine or you could have a disaster. This has only happened once in 1872. Horace greeley passed away between election day and the meeting of the Electoral College. Hed lost the election to ulysses s. Grant and so his electors and the Electoral College voted for whoever they wanted, but it didnt matter because he had lost anyway and a number of them still voted for Horace Greeley even though he was dead and Congress Threw out those votes when they counted them in january at that time in march and they voted for january subsequently. This process has been amended a few times with some changes and you had the aforementioned 12th amendment in 1804 which separated out between the president and Vice President , and the 14th amendment in 1868 which says that Electoral College votes can be reduced or thrown out if a state limits right of people to vote and this is one of the most aggressive piece of language in favor of Voting Rights in the constitution, where congress, and the courts are supposed to be compelled to take away the states electoral votes if they inapproa inapproach atly restricted the right to vote. And you do wonder with a lot of the controversies with voting restrictions happening in some states if you wont see Something Like this in the relatively near future if the 14th amendment case about statag away the Electoral College votes because taking away Voter Registration and voter access to ballot boxes. The electoral count act of 1887 which set up formal laws for challenges with ambiguities and the electoral votes and prior to that there was no law about how to deal with the Electoral College, and from a statutory standpoint. The 20th amendment in 1933 moved the date of the Electoral Colleges meeting, the counting of votes and inauguration up to january. Prior to all of this stuff happening in january and march, and it happened in december and january in part to make the governmental system, and you had the new government sat with travel technology and speeds amping up and the 20th century it was no longer no longer necessary to give people six months to travel to d. C. And the 20th amendment started to create some contingency plans for what happens if a president dies. The president ial succession act of 1947 put some teeth behind what happens if a candidate or president dies. Largely because the congress was really spooked by fdrs death only one a couple months into his fourth term. They all realized he could have easily died several months earlier before he had been thaurgted and they wouldnt have any clue what to do. The 22nd amendment, limited the president to two terms. And then the 23rd amendment gave the district of columbia three votes in the Electoral College. Has this process always worked out . No. There have been plenty of anomalies. You can mean any number of things. This means i take this to mean any election where things didnt work out the way that people expected or planned with the system or you had a mismatch between the popular vote and the Electoral College and or you had other anomalies that required the congress or somebody else to take relatively extreme steps or where the design of the Electoral College seemed to play a major role in who was able to win or not on that election day. You can see here, theres been at least eight president ial elections where they were significant anomalies caused by the system itself that are worth discussion. The first of which is the election of 1800 in which jefferson and burr tied for first place because all of the jeffersonians cast their two ballots for jefferson and burr, respectively. But because at that time prior to the 12th amendment, there was no distinguishing between which ballot was intended to be president and Vice President , even though everyone knew that burr was supposed to be jeffersons running mate. We had no winner coming out of the Electoral Colleges and the house of representatives had to choose a winner. It took the house 36 votes and several weeks to ultimately beat back federalist attempts to supplant jefferson with burr and jefferson became president and burr became, you know, public enemy number one to all of the jeffersonians. 1821, no cant one a majority on the Electoral College. Andrew jackson who won with 41 , far short of a majority, but who had 41 of the Electoral College votes lost the election despite having plurality in both counts when henry clay, who came in third, directed his supporters to back John Quincy Adams who had come in second, pushing him over the top in the house. This was seen as a big problem by Andrew Jackson who thought he should be president. Fast forward 12 years, to the election of 1836. A number of electors refused to support Richard Johnson as Martin Van Burens Vice President ial candidate, and Richard Johnson while van buren wins a majority, Richard Johnson does not. They ultimately decide to make johnson Vice President anyway. But heres a case where things didnt really work out as planned or very smoothly. The election of 1876 is a notable one. Samuel tilden, a zdemocrat, win the popular vote with 51 but 20 Electoral College votes are disputed in the joint session of congress. They were thrown out which meant neither he nor hayes have a majority. The debate over what to do dragged out for months with democrats being very upset that they lost an election that they thought they rightfully won, both in the popular vote and in the Electoral College. There were threats of another civil war. Ultimately what was called the compromise of 1877 gave the what democrats agreed to give the presidency to hayes in return for the end of reconstruction in the south. So, you know, without the Electoral College, reconstruction may have had a more satisfactory end. Election of 1888, Glover Cleveland wins the popular vote with 49 of the vote in his reelection effort but loses the Electoral College to Benjamin Harrison who got 48 of the popular vote. This result was largely caused by harrisons tiny 1 win in new york state. Cleveland sort of sweeping the more rural and Southern States overwhelming of harrison not even on the ballot. The election of 1860 is one that doesnt often get talked about because if you look at the results, it looks clear, kennedy won the popular vote, very narrowly. He won 49. 7 of the vote to nixons 49. 6 of the vote. About 0. 1 of 1 margin. But if you look at the Electoral College, it looks like he won divisively. This is so close, there was so much going on, in many ways, nixon may have been screwed out of the election or was screwed out of a popular vote victory. John f. Kennedy won the election by 100,000 votes which is a microscopic edge. But the outcome may have hinged on anomalies in Southern States. In alabama, they refused to put nixon on the ballot and they took all of the candidates names on the ballots and put the electors names on the ballots. Five of the electors came out and said they supported kennedy. The other six refused to say who they supported. In all probably because they were antikennedy delegates. Six of the antikennedy delegates, five of the kenneth delegates won. They couldnt bring themselves to vote for nixon. In a fair system, nixon and kennedy probably would have been on the ballot as the nominees and in a fair system, nixon probably would have won the state and probably would have won 11 Electoral College votes in alabama. But as it stands, nixon neither nixon nor kennedy were given any credit for the popular votes in alabama and nixon lost out on 11 electoral votes in alabama. In 2000, most of you know, al gore won the popular vote, 48. 4 but lost the Electoral College to bush with floridas votes disputed. If you followed what happened in 2000, not only did gore win the popular vote, he may very well have won florida as well, but the recount was halted by the Supreme Court. Well know who won florida but that recounter ended up being decisive. If it was the 19th century, they probably would have thrown out the ballots and congress would have made a decision in early 2001 and probably would have ended up in that same outcome. In the house they would have carried the day and installed george w. Bush as president. But unlike the 19th century politicians today in congress, less willing to throw out Electoral College votes and install a president through the congressional selection process. And then of course the election of 2016 was another one where we had a mismatch between the popular vote with Hillary Clinton winning 2 Percentage Points more than donald trump but donald trump edging out clinton in the Electoral College by winning a number of midwestern states very narrowly against clintons running up the t tally in larger urban states. Questions about the process, how it works and how it plays out . Its a lot. I had a question. Go ahead. How did a president ial candidate selecting their electors for each state work before parties were a thing . So preparties, you just kind of had the state legislature nominate wise folks, but they were also nominating slates of partisan folks. In 1792, it looked different, the legislature promoted notable citizens because everybody new everyone was voting for washington. You had participants on each side because there was a dispute over who should be Vice President as early as 1789. There were proadams people, adams ended up having the most support. By 1796, you had parties within the state legislatures, running the show and nominating to the electors to the degree there was a popular vote and the preponderance of states early on, they selected winners by a legislative vote and picking partisans as the electors. By the 1830s you have really formal party systems. It kind of looked much the same since the 1830s. Thanks. Other questions . Feel free to speak up. Probably the most complicated system of election in the world. I dont think you can find another election system where it would take that many slides to explain the process and most places, voting is as simple as you vote and someone wins when they get more votes. The Electoral College is a special and unusual system. Quick addendum to our Vice President. Vice president is really an after thought in the Electoral College. Initially, they just designated a person who came second as Vice President because they wanted there to be a Vice President in case a president died and they wanted it to be someone who had a broad level of support. But the point of having two votes in the Electoral College was not to pick a Vice President , but to force electors to vote for someone not from their state. One of the things i didnt show in the slides that remains true is one of the few things that binds Electoral College electors, theyre not allowed to cast their two ballots for two people from the same state. A party, therefore, can never nominate a president and a Vice President from the same state because the electors would not be allowed to vote for one of them. They would have to vote for someone else. That was done early onto force electors to think about they assumed they would all pick their favorite person from their state, their leading state politician with their first ballots but they would have to think hard on their second ballot about who is someone they like from another state and that would elevate someone with a National Character like a George Washington or john adams or Thomas Jefferson, people who had become National Citizens and leaders at that point. I didnt work out that way because the Burr Jefferson controversy led to the 12th amendment which they cast president ial and Vice President ial ballots. But that rule remained. Today, essentially, the Vice President s biggest role in the Electoral College is that the vpelect can become president if no president is chosen. Even if you have some sort of deadlock at the president ial level, its likely that youre going to get a Vice President ialelect nominee because the senate has much clearer voting rules and the house you can have a bunch of states deadlock and not cast ballots in the formal house of representatives balloting for president in the case of an Electoral College failure. For Vice President , each of the senators just votes for who they want and someone is going to get the most votes. And that person becomes Vice President and so even if the house didnt pick a president , that person likely also becomes president of the United States. So oddly in an interesting, untended way, the Vice President continues to primarily serve the role of saving us for not being a president by being alive and elected. Also we can think about the Vice President is sometimes playing an Important Role in candidates Electoral College strategies. It remains common, though not always true, that president s will or parties will select a Vice President ial candidate that they think will help them win a key state in the Electoral College. You see this sometimes, but not other times. Tim kaine may have been selected in 2016 by Hillary Clinton in part because she wanted to ensure she won virginia and perhaps that would give them a tiny enough bump in virginia for it to be divisive. And weve seen this at other times. We get plenty of candidates for Vice President who are going to play no role in terms of helping the president win their home state in the Electoral College, both mike pence and Kamala Harris come from clear, partisan states, where their presence on the ballot isnt really necessary to push those states over the top. Thats the addendum on the Vice President. Any final questions or comments . I had another question. Go for it. On the 14th amendment, you talked a little bit about how theoretically congress could throw away states that denied voting access. Would that play out by, like, congressional statute or by Court Decision . Thats by court. Congress can throw them out by any reason. They dont need the 14th amendment. The 14th amendment gives the public an opportunity to challenge Electoral College votes through the federal court system by arguing that state unduly restricted someones right to vote. It allows a second mechanism for throwing out votes. Prior it was just congress. Now, potentially also the Supreme Court can throw out, under the 14th amendment, throw out Electoral College votes. Its a second avenue, but theres never been an attempt that got very far. Some of the lawsuits in florida around the 2000 election and with everything that went wrong in florida in 2000 centered on the 14th amendment. In fact, both sides were able to weaponize the 14th amendment. But the gore people arguing that these should be thrown out and or there should be a recount. If there cant be a recount, it should be thrown out because it seemed like certain peoples were disenfranchised by balloting design decisions at the state and county level. But the bush people were making an argument that likewise you shouldnt recount what the gore people are trying to push for was a recount in three or four counties where things were particularly bad. The bush side arguing you should recount the entire state. If you recounted in some counties and not in others, this was a violation of the protection clause of the 14th amendment. The 14th amendment came into play on both sides arguments in 2000. But you just havent seen a lot of sort of really strong efforts at using that specific part of the 14th amendment, though, you have to imagine it will happen at some point. Basically, it allows for a judicial avenue for throwing out Electoral College votes. Congress as its own avenue and doesnt need a reason. Okay. Thanks. Other questions . If not, i will see you all on wednesday and if youre able to, please try to watch or attend the hinkley forum. It should be an interesting discussion of the presidency. See you all later. Every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv on cspan3, go inside a Different College classroom and hear about topics ranging from the american revolution, civil rights, and u. S. President s to 9 11. Thanks for your patience and for logging into class. With most College Campuses closed due to the impact of the coronavirus, which professors transfer to a virtual setting. Gorbachev did most of the work to change the soviet union but reagan met him halfway, reagan encouraged him, reagan supported him. Freedom of the press which well get to later i should just mention, madison originally called it freedom of the use of the press and it is indeed freedom to print things and publish things. Its not a freedom for what we now refer to institutionally as the press. Lectures in history on cspan3, every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. Lectures in history is available as a podcast. Find it where you listen to podcasts. Youre watching cspan3. Your unfiltered view of government. Created by americas Cable Television companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. Weeknights this month were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan3. Tonight, university of Mary Washington Professor William crowley discusses the life and legacy of Thomas Jefferson paying attention on his words and actions on slavery and race. Thats at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. And enjoy American History tv this week and every weekend on cspan3. John f. Kennedy was the first and remains the only catholic to be elected president of the United States. During the 1960 campaign, many protestant groups opposed senator kennedy fearing the influence of the pope and the Catholic Church on his president. From september 12th, 1960, democratic nominee john f. Kennedy on the topic of church and state, religious freedom and tolerance. He spoke to a meeting of houston professors. It includes an extended questionandanswer session and parts of the film were used as campaign ads. From houstons rice hotel, senator john kennedy is about to address a special meeting of the Greater Houston Ministerial Association to which hes been invited. Senator kennedy will participate in an informal questionandanswer period. The telecast of this meeting is sponsored by the Kennedy Johnson Texas Campaign committee and is being seen throughout texas on a special 22station network. Th