ABSTRACT
The Electoral College, that jury-rigged compromise that allowed the framers to flee the sweltering Philadelphia summer heat in 1787, has survived admirably for 220 years. Every four years, it has delivered reasonably clear election results and reasonably legitimate presidents. George W. Bush, who received 500,000 fewer popular votes than Al Gore and who owed his electoral victory in 2000 to a 5–4 Supreme Court decision, emerged from the controversial election with 271 electoral votes and the widespread, if not universal, public acceptance of his victory as legitimate. 1 Although Bush’s minority vote win spurred some renewed interest in reforming or eliminating the Electoral College, as well as some academic analyses, with the notable exception of the “National Popular Vote Interstate Compact” movement (see below) no serious attempts to reform the institution have gained much traction. 2 Indeed, current conventional wisdom generally discounts the possibility of fundamentally altering the presidential election process through a constitutional amendment. Still, as George Edwards points out, even if the core elements of the Electoral College are retained, at least two major defects remain—the “contingent election” possibility of the House determining the outcome and the problem of “faithless electors.” 3
