Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?

Pauline Maier Memorial Lecture

Every four years, millions of Americans find themselves asking why they choose their presidents through the peculiar mechanism called the Electoral College―an arcane institution that narrows election campaigns to swing states and can permit the loser of the popular vote to become president. The Electoral College has had critics since the early nineteenth century, and over the years Congress has considered hundreds of constitutional amendments aimed at transforming the electoral system. Alex Keyssar traces the origins of the Electoral College as a much wrangled-over compromise among delegates to the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention who had no previous experience with electing a chief executive.