The Electoral College w/ Edward Foley
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 14 October 2024
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
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 is a rebroadcast of RTN #224 which originally aired on February 21, 2022. This version has been updated and abridged by Ben Sawyer. The original episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Ben Sawyer and this is the road to now. This week, the topic is the Electoral College. |
| 0:11.4 | Oh, what a set of problems. And it's a set that goes back to the founding of the country. At least |
| 0:17.2 | at one point they tried to fix it with the 12th Amendment. We get into all this in this conversation, along with why it is that Congress does the count that it does, and some suggestions for how to make it a little bit better. |
| 0:29.9 | All of these come from our guest, an expert on the history of the Constitution, Edward Foley of the Ohio State University. |
| 0:37.0 | We originally recorded this conversation |
| 0:39.2 | and aired it back in 2022. And I know a lot of podcasts are doing this topic right now just because |
| 0:45.5 | it's topical with the election coming up. But when I went back and listened to this, there's a lot |
| 0:50.5 | in this conversation that Ned does and discusses that just I haven't heard anywhere else. |
| 0:55.4 | So I hope you guys enjoy this. You take away a little bit more about the history of the |
| 0:58.7 | Electoral College, why there are so many problems, why they changed it with the 12th Amendment. |
| 1:03.3 | Now, this isn't going to solve all the problems of the Electoral College, but it might give you |
| 1:07.4 | the tools you need to figure out what ideas to support to maybe one day get this beast under control. |
| 1:12.8 | So, hope you enjoy this. |
| 1:14.5 | As always, we're grateful to the patrons who support the show. |
| 1:16.9 | If you want to check us out and support our work, it's patreon.com slash the road to now. |
| 1:21.1 | Bob and I have some great new episodes lined up coming up, including an episode on the Drug Wars in Colombia. |
| 1:26.3 | More on Lafayette in the 200-year |
| 1:28.3 | anniversary of his return toward the United States, and a couple more really exciting ones |
| 1:34.3 | that we are working on locking down. So we hope you enjoy this re-air and look forward to |
| 1:38.7 | those new episodes. Guys, thanks for listening. I was recently reading a book by our guest today, Ned Foley, |
| 1:47.6 | who's a professor of law at the Ohio State University. The book's called Ballot Battles. |
| 1:53.7 | And it's the history of disputed elections in the United States. Fun. And I was reading about the |
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