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Overthrowing the Electoral College: The Margaret Chase Smith and Edmund Muskie experience
With even Donald Trump sometimes advocating electoral college reform, it’s likely that this school’s accreditation may be seriously challenged when Congress matriculates next year.
It’s now well known that Maine stands out in the present system for being the only state this year expected to split its electoral votes, something not done any place since Nebraska did so eight years ago even though it was once a more common phenomenon in the nation’s early history. (Maine did so, for example, in 1828.)
What’s not so well known is the role that both our U.S. senators in the 1960s and early '70s, Margaret Chase Smith and Edmund Muskie, played championing the most significant effort ever to overthrow the system. In 1969, with bipartisan support including the backing of newly-elected President Richard Nixon, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 338 to 70 to pass a constitutional amendment shutting down the electoral college and substituting a nationwide popular vote.
...
Interest at this time was triggered by the wrenching 1968 election, the last time any third party presidential candidate won votes in the electoral college. By carrying electoral votes of five states Alabama’s George Wallace’s strength pointed up a potential malfunctioning of the system. That’s because by posing the threat of depriving the two major nominees, Nixon and Hubert Humphrey, of a majority of electoral college votes, he exposed an obscure but ominous quirk in the way such elections are required to be handled. In such an instance, the House of Representatives, with each state entitled to cast only a single vote, would choose the president. The senate would then choose the vice president. It’s a process that was seen as not only less democratic than the electoral college but also posed the potential of choosing a president and vice president who might be diametrically incompatible.
http://www.dailybulldog.com/db/opinion/overthrowing-the-electoral-college-the-margaret-chase-smith-and-edmund-muskie-experience/
It’s now well known that Maine stands out in the present system for being the only state this year expected to split its electoral votes, something not done any place since Nebraska did so eight years ago even though it was once a more common phenomenon in the nation’s early history. (Maine did so, for example, in 1828.)
What’s not so well known is the role that both our U.S. senators in the 1960s and early '70s, Margaret Chase Smith and Edmund Muskie, played championing the most significant effort ever to overthrow the system. In 1969, with bipartisan support including the backing of newly-elected President Richard Nixon, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 338 to 70 to pass a constitutional amendment shutting down the electoral college and substituting a nationwide popular vote.
...
Interest at this time was triggered by the wrenching 1968 election, the last time any third party presidential candidate won votes in the electoral college. By carrying electoral votes of five states Alabama’s George Wallace’s strength pointed up a potential malfunctioning of the system. That’s because by posing the threat of depriving the two major nominees, Nixon and Hubert Humphrey, of a majority of electoral college votes, he exposed an obscure but ominous quirk in the way such elections are required to be handled. In such an instance, the House of Representatives, with each state entitled to cast only a single vote, would choose the president. The senate would then choose the vice president. It’s a process that was seen as not only less democratic than the electoral college but also posed the potential of choosing a president and vice president who might be diametrically incompatible.
http://www.dailybulldog.com/db/opinion/overthrowing-the-electoral-college-the-margaret-chase-smith-and-edmund-muskie-experience/