{"id":1822,"date":"2016-12-05T17:47:03","date_gmt":"2016-12-05T17:47:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-211pinsker\/?p=1822"},"modified":"2016-12-05T17:56:47","modified_gmt":"2016-12-05T17:56:47","slug":"debating-the-electoral-college","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-211pinsker\/2016\/12\/05\/debating-the-electoral-college\/","title":{"rendered":"Debating the Electoral College"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>Resolved: \u00a0The Electoral College Should be Abolished and Replaced with a Direct National Popular Vote for President<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>There\u00a0have been about 12,000 proposed constitutional amendments since 1788, and nearly\u00a0700 of them have concerned ideas for fixing the Electoral College. \u00a0There have been 27 amendments to the US Constitution since its ratification. \u00a0One of those amendments directly concerned the Electoral College (<a href=\"http:\/\/press-pubs.uchicago.edu\/founders\/tocs\/amendXII.html\" target=\"_blank\">12th<\/a>), and naturally, it has been\u00a0the longest in textual change so far. Perhaps even more revealing, a majority of the other 26 amendments have involved some aspect of the\u00a0American election process. \u00a0 \u00a0This is not to say that US campaigns and elections are &#8220;rigged,&#8221; but it&#8217;s clear they&#8217;ve never been perfect. \u00a0The question is, can we make them somehow &#8220;more perfect&#8221; by eliminating the Electoral College?<\/p>\n<p>Here are two completely contradictory views by some informed historians:<\/p>\n<p>On the side of elimination:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/historynewsnetwork.org\/article\/436\" target=\"_blank\">Akhil Reed Amar and Vikram David Amar in FindLaw (2002)<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>On the side of preservation:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/posteverything\/wp\/2016\/11\/15\/in-defense-of-the-electoral-college\/\" target=\"_blank\">Allen Guelzo and James Hulme in Washington Post (2016)<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>What do you think?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Resolved: \u00a0The Electoral College Should be Abolished and Replaced with a Direct National Popular Vote for President There\u00a0have been about 12,000 proposed constitutional amendments since 1788, and nearly\u00a0700 of them have concerned ideas for fixing the Electoral College. \u00a0There have been 27 amendments to the US Constitution since its ratification. \u00a0One of those amendments directly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":373,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[344],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discussion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-211pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-211pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-211pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-211pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/373"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-211pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-211pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1822\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-211pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-211pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-211pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}