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The Electoral College Experts Debate and Audience Dialogue (Part 4)

Moderator: Alexander S. Belenky
Judith Best Robert Bennett Alexander Keyssar Robert Hardaway John Fortier Akhil Amar Vikram Amar Paul Schumaker Arnold I. Barnett PhD '73 Alan Natapoff David King: October 17, 2008; Running Time: 1:21:51

About the Lecture

About the Lecture

Much like our divided country, each side of this debate strains to comprehend the perspective of the other, together reaching no consensus on the fate of the Electoral College. In what feels like a constitutional law and political science scrimmage, participants lob questions and spark exchanges. What follows is a short list of discussion themes:

Judith Best wonders how a movement currently pursuing a nationwide popular vote outside of a Constitutional amendment can accomplish its goal without usurping Constitutional process. Robert Bennett responds that advocates believe they are neither overturning the Constitutional system nor encroaching on the prerogatives of federal government. Alexander Belenky asks what benefits popular vote proponents think it will bring. Alexander Keyssar asks in return, “Why shouldn’t people … have the ultimate voice in deciding what their political institutions look like?”

Robert Hardaway worries about implementation of the direct national election. John Fortier notes possible problems among states over differing voting standards (e.g., polling hours, or mail-in ballots). Akhil Amar adds, “Who votes and who doesn’t? Is it fair if one state allows 16-year-olds and another 18-year-olds? Is it equal if one state lets you vote for three months and another lets you vote for three hours? These are real issues, but in the end don’t scare me away.”

Is a national popular vote doomed due to inertia and the preference of political parties for the Electoral College? Bennett imagines opposition might wither if a modest version of a nationwide vote emerged. Akhil Amar believes if both parties feel “bitten in the back” by the EC system, they’ll say “let’s move.” Vikram Amar says unlike other ideas for constitutional amendments (such as for a balanced budget or school prayer), a popular vote has “potential for traction,” since it involves improving democracy.

Best thinks proponents of popular election “have their priorities wrong and should go after the Senate first.” Vikram Amar agrees that the Senate is anachronistic, part of the original deal “to get the Constitution done” but Akhil Amar states there are “perfectly sound reasons for wanting to change the presidency and selection mechanism that do not require rethinking the Senate.”

Belenky wonders if it’s good for the country if we elect a president by a thin plurality who has lost the popular vote in every state. Keyssar retorts “that for any conceivable electoral system the rest of people here…can think of a disastrous counter example.” Best insists that “as thinkers, we must be careful to not confuse end and means: the goal of an election is to produce a president who can govern this nation.”

Concludes Akhil Amar, “Many arguments invoked against popular elections are actually red herrings, which might be sufficient to persuade people to stick with what we’ve got now.” Says Bennett, “I don’t think there’s any doubt, if we go to a national popular vote … there might be unexpected consequences …but the notion that it will be somehow fatal is an over-dramatization of a point.”

Lecture Details

Location: Bartos Theater

About the Speakers

Moderator: Alexander S. Belenky

Visiting Scholar, MIT Center for Engineering Systems Fundamentals

Alexander S. Belenky is the author of books and scientific articles in the fields of optimization and game theory and their applications in transportation, industry, agriculture, environmental protection, advertising, brokerage, auctioning, and U.S. presidential elections.

He is the author of Operations Research in Transportation Systems: Ideas and Schemes of Optimization Methods for Strategic Planning and Operations Management(2004). He is also the author of the books How America Chooses Its Presidents (2007) Extreme Outcomes of U.S. Presidential Elections (2003) and Winning the U.S. Presidency: Rules of the Game and Playing by the Rules (2004). He was an invited guest on radio and TV talk shows throughout the country in the course of the 2004 election campaign. His co-authored opinion pieces about voting systems have appeared in The Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor, and The New York Times.

Belenky holds a Ph.D. in systems analysis and mathematics and D.Sc. in applications of mathematical methods.

Judith Best

Professor of Political Science, State University of New York, Cortland

Judith Best teaches about political theory, American government and American political thought and jurisprudence. She has numerous publications, including: The Choice of the People? Debating the Electoral College (1996) and The Case Against Direct Election of the President: A Defense of the Electoral College(1975). She has spoken frequently before Congress and the public on the Electoral College System. She received her M.A. from the University of Michigan and her Ph.D. from Cornell University. Best has been a member of the Cortland faculty since 1973.

Robert Bennett

Nathaniel L. Nathanson Professor of Law, Northwestern University Law School

A scholar in the field of constitutional law, Robert Bennett has been a member of the faculty of the Northwestern University School of Law since 1969, serving as the school’s dean from 1985 to 1995. Bennett frequently teaches a seminar in the Law of American Democracy and courses in contracts, legislation, constitutional law, and constitutional theory. Bennett has also taught as a visiting professor at the University of Illinois College of Law, the University of Virginia School of Law, the University of Southern California Law Center, Brooklyn Law School, and the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University.

Alexander Keyssar

Professor of History and Social Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

Alexander Keyssar is an historian by training, and has specialized in the excavation of issues that have contemporary policy implications. His 1986 book, Out of Work: The First Century of Unemployment in Massachusetts, was awarded three scholarly prizes. His book, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (2000), was named the best book in U.S. history by both the American Historical Association and the Historical Society; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Keyssar is coauthor of Inventing America, a text integrating the history of technology and science into the mainstream of American history. In 2004/5, Keyssar chaired the Social Science Research Council's National Research Commission on Voting and Elections.

Robert Hardaway

Professor of Law, University of Denver College of Law

After graduating from Amherst College in 1968 and Order of the Coif from New York University Law School, Robert Hardaway joined the U.S. Navy JAG Corps where he processed civil claims and also served as both a prosecutor and criminal defense lawyer. After serving four years, he joined the Denver law firm of Rovira, Demuth, and Eiberger where he practiced civil litigation. He also later served as a Deputy District attorney for Arapahoe County and rounded out his litigation career as a Colorado Deputy Public Defender, where he handled hundreds of felony cases, including death penalty cases. From there, he first entered academia as a clinical supervisor at the University of Denver College of Law, ultimately becoming a tenured Professor of Law.

He is the author of 14 published books on law and public policy, and 29 law review articles, reviews, and articles in professional journals. More recently, he has expanded the scope of his professional writing to include docudramas and law-related fiction and novels and appears frequently on television and in the media commenting on legal issues.

John Fortier

Research Fellow, American Enterprise Institute

John Fortier is the principal contributor to the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project and executive director of the Continuity of Government Commission. A political scientist who has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, University of Delaware, Boston College, and Harvard University, Fortier has written numerous scholarly and popular articles. His books include Absentee and Early Voting: Trends, Promises, and Perils (2006), After the People Vote: A Guide to the Electoral College (2004), and Second-Term Blues: How George W. Bush Has Governed (2007). Fortier writes a column for Politico and is a frequent radio and television commentator on the presidency, Congress, and elections. He received his B.A. from Georgetown University and his Ph.D. from Boston College.

Akhil Amar

Professor of Law, Yale University Law School

Akhil Reed Amar teaches constitutional law at both Yale College and Yale Law School. He received his B.A. in 1980 from Yale College, and his J.D. in 1984 from Yale Law School, where he served as an editor of The Yale Law Journal. After clerking for Judge Stephen Breyer, U.S. Court of Appeals, 1st Circuit, Amar joined the Yale faculty in 1985. Amar is the co-editor of a leading constitutional law casebook, Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking. He is also the author of several books, including The Constitution and Criminal Procedure: First Principles (Yale Univ. Press, 1997), The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction (Yale Univ. Press, 1998), and most recently, America’s Constitution: A Biography (Random House, 2005).

Vikram Amar

Professor of Law, University of California, Davis Law School
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs

Vikram Amar rejoined the UC Davis Law School (where he was a faculty member from 1993-1998) in 2007, after teaching at UC Hastings for a decade. He received a bachelor's degree in history from the University of California at Berkeley and his J.D. from Yale, where he served as an articles Editor for the Yale Law Journal. After law school in 1988, Amar clerked for Judge William A. Norris of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and then for Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the United States Supreme Court. He has also taught regularly as a Visiting Professor at the UC Berkeley School of Law and at the UCLA School of Law.

Paul Schumaker

Professor of Political Science, University of Kansas

Paul Schumaker has been a professor at the University of Kansas since 1990. He has published a number of books, including From Ideologies to Public Philosophies: An Introduction to Political Theory (Blackwell, 2008); and Choosing our President: The Electoral College and Beyond (edited with Burdett Loomis, Chatham House, 2002). He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1973.

Arnold I. Barnett PhD '73

George Eastman Professor of Management Science, MIT Sloan School of Management

Arnold Barnett is one of the nation’s foremost authorities on aviation security. He uses statistical techniques to probe social and organizational issues. Barnett heads an FAA research team to investigate antiterrorist measures. He has also written at length about crime and punishment, war casualties, and the misuse of statistics in the media.

The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences honored him with the 1996 President’s Award for outstanding contributions to the betterment of society. In 2002, he received the President’s Citation from the Flight Safety Foundation for “truly outstanding contributions on behalf of safety.”

Barnett holds a B.A. in Physics from Columbia College and a Ph.D.in Mathematics from MIT.

Alan Natapoff

Research Scientist, MIT

Alan Natapoff studied physics at Cornell, and as a graduate student in particle physics at Berkeley. He came to MIT as a postdoctoral fellow in biology and brain sciences and, since 1969, has been a research scientist at MIT's Center for Space Research in the Man-Vehicle Laboratory.

For several decades, Natapoff has been interested in the problems of voting power and was technical advisor to Harvard Medical School's faculty in the design of its voting system. In 1977 he was invited to testify on the design of the Electoral College before the Senate Judiciary's subcommittee on Constitutional Rights. In 1996, his views on the Electoral College appeared in Public Choice under the title, "A mathematical one-man one-vote rationale for Madisonian presidential voting based on maximum individual voting power."

David King

Lecturer in Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

David C. King lectures on the U.S. Congress, political parties, and election reform. He joined the Harvard faculty in 1992. In the wake of the 2000 presidential elections, King directed the Task Force on Election Administration for the National Commission on Election Reform. That effort culminated in landmark voting rights legislation signed by President Bush in late 2002. He later oversaw an evaluation and new management structure for the Boston Election Department. David King is the faculty director of Harvard’s program for Newly Elected Members of the U.S. Congress. He has run similar programs for the State Duma of the Russian Federation, and he has advised on legislative design issues in several countries, including South Korea, Nicaragua, Chile, and Bolivia.

King is co-author of The Generation of Trust: Public Confidence in the U.S. Military Since Vietnam, (2003), author of Turf Wars: How Congressional Committees Claim Jurisdiction (1997), and co-editor of Why People Don't Trust Government (1997).