#224 The Electoral College w/ Edward Foley
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 21 February 2022
⏱️ 68 minutes
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Summary
The Constitution empowers the electoral college to select the President, but the process for counting electors' votes remains in the hands of Congress. In this episode, Constitutional Law Professor Edward Foley explains the origins of the electoral college, how and why the 12th Amendment changed the process for electing Presidents, and the concerns that led Congress to codify the procedure for counting electors' votes in 1887. Edward also offers some specific ways that updating the Electoral Count Act of 1887 might help us avoid some of the potential problems that might arise in upcoming elections.
Edward Foley holds the Ebersold Chair in Constitutional Law at The Ohio State University, where he also directs its election law program. He is a regular contributor to The Washington Post and the author of multiple books, including Ballot Battles: The History of Disputed Elections in the United States (Oxford University Press, 2016) and Presidential Elections and Majority Rule (Oxford University Press, 2020). You can follow him on twitter at @NedFoley.
This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Bob Crawford. |
| 0:04.5 | I'm Ben Sawyer. |
| 0:05.6 | And this is the road to now. |
| 0:07.5 | Ben, I've been thinking a lot about the 12th Amendment and the electoral college. |
| 0:14.9 | And I was recently reading, rereading a book by our guest today, Ned Foley, who's a professor of law at the |
| 0:23.6 | Ohio State University. |
| 0:24.9 | And the book's called Ballot Battles. |
| 0:28.8 | And it's the history of disputed elections in the United States. |
| 0:32.1 | Fun. |
| 0:33.1 | And I was reading about the 12th Amendment, and he has a quote from James Madison in 1823. |
| 0:41.6 | So this is an old James Madison reaching the finish line of his esteemed, heroic, historic life. |
| 0:49.8 | And reflecting upon the Electoral College, he says of the Convention of 1787, he says, quote, |
| 0:57.7 | discussion of the Electoral College, quote, took place in the later stage of the session, unquote, |
| 1:04.0 | and thus, quote, it was not exempt from a degree of the hurrying influence produced by fatigue |
| 1:10.3 | and impatience in all such bodies." |
| 1:13.6 | So once again, we talked about this last week how sometimes things happen that become |
| 1:21.6 | conspiracy theories, but they just happen because nobody estimates how incredible human fatigue is and how human |
| 1:32.3 | stupidity can be, right? |
| 1:34.3 | Something happens. |
| 1:35.3 | People say, it must be a conspiracy. |
| 1:36.3 | No, it's just somebody made a big mistake. |
| 1:39.3 | James Madison once again confirms that the founding fathers were no different than you and I, |
... |
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