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The complicated history of how America elects presidents and why this matters to the next election An engaging mix of history and political science, Distorting Democracy will awaken Americans to the perils of our system by unveiling the Electoral College’s origins, history, and current problems. This book demonstrates that the system has no principled foundation, that it has changed dramatically over its 230–year history, and that it now threatens the legitimacy of our political system. The book is divided into three ground-breaking sections: Part I tells the story of the Electoral College’s origins in the Constitutional Convention. Defenders of the Electoral College tend to invoke gauzy images of the Founding Fathers infusing our system with their unique, timeless wisdom. But history tells a very different story. The Founding Fathers faced a mess; they responded by creating a mess. Part II traces two hundred years of innovations—many of them subtle but highly consequential—to the plan described in the Constitution. As the new nation rapidly descended into bitter political conflict, many of the framers themselves, driven by their partisan interests, massaged the Electoral College into a form that differed profoundly from their founding intentions. Subsequent generations tinkered similarly with the systems’ possibilities, always exploiting its potential for political gain. Part III examines how our strange presidential election system has produced frustrating results with increasing frequency in recent elections. Who can forget the Bush-Gore contest of 2000, when the results hinged on “hanging chads” and fewer than 1,500 votes in Florida? Americans endured weeks of a single-state recount, only to have the Supreme Court halt the process and hand the election to George W. Bush. Bush won the Electoral College by a single vote, but Al Gore captured 500,000 more popular votes. Then, in 2016, Donald Trump stunned the world with a substantial Electoral College victory of 302-227, though nearly 3 million more Americans preferred his opponent, and roughly 7 million voted for a third-party candidate.The system increasingly returns results that conflict with the expressed wishes of a majority of voters, a product of our hyper-polarized landscape and unique geopolitical distribution of party loyalists. The system cannot improve until we learn the complicated history of the Electoral College and the lessons it holds for us today. "Every American should read this book. It brings facts and clarity to a debate that too often relies on conjecture about the Electoral College’s purposes and ill-informed arguments about how it actually operates. The lessons herein are immense." -- Joshua A. Douglas, Ashland, Inc-Spears Distinguished Research Professor of Law, University of Kentucky
This printers, publishers and booksellers index is modeled after Bristol's Index of Printers, Publishers and Booksellers Indicated by Charles Evans in his American Bibliography. Each entry contains a name and place, with item numbers listed underneath by date. Personal names are listed in the most complete form that could be determined. Corporate names are listed in the form used by the Library of Congress. Newspapers and magazines are entered by their full titles as recorded in Brigham's American Newspapers, 1821-1936 and Union List of Serials. Also included is a geographical index by city and a list of omissions with explanations.
A New Statesman Book of the Year “America’s greatest historian of democracy now offers an extraordinary history of the most bizarre aspect of our representative democracy—the electoral college...A brilliant contribution to a critical current debate.” —Lawrence Lessig, author of They Don’t Represent Us Every four years, millions of Americans wonder why they choose their presidents through an arcane institution that permits the loser of the popular vote to become president and narrows campaigns to swing states. Congress has tried on many occasions to alter or scuttle the Electoral College, and in this master class in American political history, a renowned Harvard professor explains its confounding persistence. After tracing the tangled origins of the Electoral College back to the Constitutional Convention, Alexander Keyssar outlines the constant stream of efforts since then to abolish or reform it. Why have they all failed? The complexity of the design and partisan one-upmanship have a lot to do with it, as do the difficulty of passing constitutional amendments and the South’s long history of restrictive voting laws. By revealing the reasons for past failures and showing how close we’ve come to abolishing the Electoral College, Keyssar offers encouragement to those hoping for change. “Conclusively demonstrates the absurdity of preserving an institution that has been so contentious throughout U.S. history and has not infrequently produced results that defied the popular will.” —Michael Kazin, The Nation “Rigorous and highly readable...shows how the electoral college has endured despite being reviled by statesmen from James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson to Edward Kennedy, Bob Dole, and Gerald Ford.” —Lawrence Douglas, Times Literary Supplement
The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. It is published daily when Congress is in session. The Congressional Record began publication in 1873. Debates for sessions prior to 1873 are recorded in The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States (1789-1824), the Register of Debates in Congress (1824-1837), and the Congressional Globe (1833-1873)