In a nutshell: let’s not be precious about a system that was a messy compromise in the first place — that nobody was happy with and that we don’t even do today as designed by the framers. What’s still true: it gives outsized influence to southern and small states.

“This system increasingly returns results that threaten to undo the expressed wishes of a majority of voters, and these “misfires” profoundly damage the body politic.”

As the electoral college becomes less and less democratic in that it subverts the popular vote, this primer on its origins and purpose is interesting and important to understand. It’s not a sacred tenet of our constitutional system or American heritage..

“Surely, George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, or Ben Franklin must have laid out the principled foundations that led clearly, logically, and inexorably to this method for selecting the president. In our minds, this lofty discourse rang with Truth so self-evident and compelling that the delegates rose to cheer in glorious consensus. As resplendent beams of light streamed in and an angel chorus swelled, the framers penned Article II of the Constitution. Except, that speech does not exist and that moment never happened.”

“Understanding the Electoral College’s decidedly un-immaculate conception can free us from slavish loyalty to a device that has served us poorly and may even endanger our republic.”

As seen in the play-by-play of the constitutional convention detailed in the first chapter, it’s an ugly compromise made to settle a protracted debate.

“Frustrated and irritable, out of options and out of time, they settled on a plan of electors only in the Convention’s final days, primarily to avoid a dangerous and problematic alternative.”

Overall a good read, well researched and brings a seminal piece of history to life. After the first 25% or so, I got the point and the rest of it read like a very thorough term paper cataloging and countering other scholars’ explanations for the electoral college.

Thanks to NetGalley for an opportunity to read this advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Distorting The Discussion. For a book about the history of the Electoral College that opens up admitting that the author thinks the Electoral College is foolhardy at best... the actual history here is quite good, and absolutely stuff virtually no one learns about even with a major in American History in college. (Perhaps Masters' or PhD students specifically studying the EC or at least the Constitutional Convention that created it would know at least some of this?) So absolutely read this book for Parts I and II, where Dupont shows that the fights that we have today about the Electoral College have been there basically since its creation and have reignited every few decades since.

It is in Part III, where Dupont begins discussing the current debates about the issue, that her acknowledged disdain comes to the fore and truly distorts the discussion. Here, she creates strawman after strawman after strawman and "debunks" them... without ever actually getting to the heart of any of the arguments she is "debunking".

Which is a shame, because throughout parts I and II, Dupont almost goes to pains to show that there have been some throughout American history who had at least part of the actual solution to the problems we now see - and were working to push that part of the solution through. In Part II, she even notes the other part to the solution... and glosses right on by it.

The solution that Dupont brings up repeatedly is the "District method" (vs the "General ticket" method we now call Winner-Take-All). Here, each Electoral Vote is, essentially, chosen by the popular vote of each Congressional District, with the overall popular vote of the State determining the Electoral Votes represented by that State's US Senators. Going to that method right now would mean that both "large State" and "small State" (to use the Founders' terms) or "urban" and "rural" (to use more modern terms) concerns would be more accurately represented in the overall Electoral College system.

But wait! There's more! The item that Dupont glosses over is the 1920s era law passed by Congress capping the number of US Representatives at 435. This was the final nail in the coffin as far as how unequal the system currently appears, allowing even a District based Electoral Vote in Wyoming to represent 400K ish people vs a District based vote in Los Angeles to easily represent 3x as many people. But that is "simply" an Act of Congress... meaning Congress can remove that restriction at any time, even, literally, the day you are reading this review.

And then there becomes a point in the Constitutional Convention that even Dupont completely misses. You see, while I haven't examined the relevant records myself (and perhaps Dupont could, and possibly release a 2nd edition of this text examining this), there are some who point out that the First Amendment as we know it... wasn't the actual First Amendment. Instead, it was the *second*, and the actual First Amendment actually closed the "Representational loophole" that Article I, Section II of the Constitution created when it noted that the "number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand". Reading that carefully, it means that the population represented by a single US Representative has a *minimum* - 30,000 people - meaning that the overall number of US Representatives has a *maximum* - 11,234 US Representatives, based on the US population in August 2024 as I write this review. But notice what this does *NOT* do - set a population *maximum* - and therefore an overall number of US Representatives *minimum*.

THIS is where the fight over the Electoral College misses its most crucial point - and it is a point Dupont seems to be entirely unaware or even ignorant of. If this so-called "true First Amendment" had passed, it would have set the population maximum per Representative - and therefore the minimum overall number of US Representatives - at 50,000 - or 6,740 US Representatives based on current US population as of late August 2024 as I write this review.

Combining the District Method Dupont discusses at length in the text here + this missing "actual First Amendment" would largely solve every single argument Dupont has against the Electoral College, and yet she missed such a crucial detail of James Madison's own efforts regarding the construction of the Constitution - thereby distorting the discussion from the get-go.

Recommended, mainly for Parts I and II, where most everyone will learn quite a bit.

Thank you, Globe Pequot, for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

I just finished Distorting Democracy: The Forgotten History Of The Electoral College—And Why It Matters Today, by Carolyn Renee Dupont, and contributions by Stephen Clements.

The first section of the book was chapters about how the electoral college originated and dispelling the myths about it being a brilliant invention of the Framers. The next section reviewed how the electoral college evolved into something the Framers never intended, starting very early on its history. The book looks at the elections of 1800, 1812 and 1824 as examples of that—as well as being examples of the kind of scheming and manipulation of the system that were not legitimately democratic elections.

After a chapter on the disastrous election of 1876, there is an excellent look at how the electoral college allowed white supremacist states to inflate their power by using blacks in the state to boost the population, while denying them the vote—just like the slave-holding used the 3/5 clause to inflate their representation in Congress and in the electoral college. The best part of the book came when it showed how the electoral college functions to disenfranchise so many voters all over the country even today. That last discussion was what pushed it over the top from an A to A+, which also entitles it to induction into the Hall of Fame.

Goodreads and NetGalley require grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, an A+ equates to 5 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

This review has been posted at NetGalley, Goodreads and my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews

I originally finished reading this on August 7, 2024.