Overview

By the People will awaken Americans to the perils of our system by unveiling the Electoral College’s origins, history, and present operations. This book demonstrates that the system has no principled foundation, that it has changed dramatically over its 230–year history, and that it threatens the legitimacy of our political system in the present. A narrative-driven mix of history and political science, By the People offers compelling stories to make its case in three distinct sections, each featuring a key argument. Part I tells the story of the Electoral College’s origins in the Constitutional Convention. Vaunted myths often dominate Americans’ understanding of the founding, but this account highlights the full humanity of key framers and reveals the decidedly un-immaculate conception of the Electoral College. The system for choosing the chief executive did not spring from pristine political commitments or deep philosophical foundations. Rather, the framers settled on this option after months of wrangling, rambling, and back-tracking. In the Convention’s final days, the exhausted, irritable, and overheated framers opted for an Electoral College primarily to avoid selection of the president by Congress, a problematic and corrupting method that many framers nonetheless preferred. Under the Convention’s political realities, they could get sufficient agreement on no other option. But the framers’ plan did not last long. Almost immediately, it worked differently than anticipated, as political operators manipulated it to their own ends. 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 own founding intentions. Subsequent generations tinkered similarly with the systems’ possibilities, always exploiting its potential for political gain. The protocols of today’s presidential contests arose mostly from these efforts, though some features acquired the formal sanction of Constitutional amendment and legislation. In recent decades our strange presidential election system has produced frustrating results with increasing frequency. 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. And it doesn’t look like things will improve anytime soon. 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 different story. The Founding Fathers faced a mess; they responded by creating a mess.

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9781493085989

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Reviews

Carolyn Dupont has done us an important service with a well-written and well-informed analysis of the electoral college, detailing in a highly readable manner some of its more egregious anti-democratic flaws. --George C. Edwards III, Distinguished Fellow, University of Oxford, and University Distinguished Professor and Jordan Chair Emeritus, Texas A&M University, Author, Why the Electoral College is Bad for America 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 J. David Rosenberg College of Law, Author, The Court v. The Voters: The Troubling Story of How the Supreme Court Has Undermined Voting Rights

Distorting Democracy paints an engaging story about the inception and evolution of the Electoral College. The historical characters, including the framers of the U.S. Constitution, come to life and offer windows intothe past you didn't know existed. A great read for emerging historians or history enthusiasts who seek to understand the nuances, complications, and distortions of the American political system. --Celina Stewart, Chief Counsel, League of Women Voters Carolyn Dupont has done us an important service with a well-written and well-informed analysis of the Electoral College, detailing in a highly readable manner some of its more egregious anti-democratic flaws. --George C. Edwards III, Distinguished Fellow, University of Oxford, and University Distinguished Professor and Jordan Chair Emeritus, Texas A&M University, Author, Why the Electoral College is Bad for America 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 J. David Rosenberg College of Law, Author, The Court v. The Voters: The Troubling Story of How the Supreme Court Has Undermined Voting Rights In vivid, compelling, and easily accessible prose, Carolyn Dupont tells how America ended up with a method of electing presidents that no one intended. Full of interesting and illuminating details, Dupont debunks the myth that the Electoral College operates as its authors intended. Instead, America has inherited an accident, a series of historical mistakes over the centuries. All Americans would benefit from reading this superb book and understanding the reality of our problematic presidential election system and how to fix it. --Edward B. Foley, Ebersold Chair in Constitutional Law, The Ohio State University, Author, Presidential Elections and Majority Rule and Ballot Battles: The History of Disputed Elections in the United States The Electoral College is a crisis waiting to happen, a flawed, anti-democratic approach to electing the president that the founders themselves had to alter within two decades of creating it. In Distorting Democracy, Carolyn Dupont dispenses with a false and romantic view of the Electoral College's origins. She demystifies its creation, explaining how an inelegant, pragmatic compromise came to pass, and traces its development into a system that has little to do with either its original purpose or contemporary democratic aspirations. May this fascinating, thoughtful and important book help spark a movement to end a system that distorts political campaigns, violates the basic principle of political equality, and undercuts majority rule. --E. J. Dionne Jr., W. Averell Harriman Chair and Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution, Distinguished University Professor, Georgetown University, Author of Why Americans Hate Politics and co-author of 100% Democracy

Author Information

Carolyn Renée Dupont is professor of American history at Eastern Kentucky University. She is the author of Mississippi Praying: Southern White Evangelicals and the Civil Rights Movement, 1945–1975 (NYU 2013), which won the Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize from the American Society of Church Historians. She holds a Ph.D. degree from the University of Kentucky. Dupont lives in Jessamine County, Kentucky. She co-leads a group of local citizens from diverse political perspectives who come together to dialogue, find common ground, and work toward mutual understanding.

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