Alexander Keyssar is the author of numerous books including The Right to Vote, which was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and won the Beveridge Award from the American Historical Association. He is Matthew W. Stirling, Jr., Professor of History and Social Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.
Comprehensive and full of historical insight. Even specialists in
political and constitutional history will encounter surprises…As
another presidential election looms, [it] deserve[s] a wide
readership.
*London Review of Books*
America’s greatest historian of democracy now offers an
extraordinary history of the most bizarre aspect of our
representative democracy—the electoral college. In a clear and
complete account of this anomaly’s origins and how it has survived,
we can see the outlines for how it might be replaced, or at least
improved upon. This is a brilliant contribution to a critical
current debate, just in time to help guide effective reform.
*Lawrence Lessig, author of They Don’t Represent Us*
Monumental…fills in the blind-spot we did not know we had…It is
hard to imagine another work significantly improving on this study
of the recurrent controversies over the design of the Electoral
College…Provides bracing accounts of how far partisans were once
willing to go to manipulate the features of the presidential
election system to advance their cause.
*New Rambler*
One of the chief virtues of Alexander Keyssar’s remarkable new book
Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College? is that it conclusively
demonstrates the absurdity of preserving an institution that has
been so contentious throughout U.S. history and has not
infrequently produced results that defied the popular will…A
scholarly masterpiece…Keyssar has crafted an absorbing, if
dispiriting, narrative about the durable obstacles to structural
change in the United States.
*The Nation*
Rigorous and highly readable…shows how the electoral college has
endured despite being reviled by statesmen from James Madison,
Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson to Edward Kennedy, Bob Dole,
and Gerald Ford.
*Times Literary Supplement*
Keyssar, our great narrator of the American right to vote, is a
national treasure who keeps giving us the history we need right
when we need it. In this thrilling achievement, he tells the
history of the Electoral College—how it has repeatedly eroded
democratic values and how we might come to replace it in the
twenty-first century. This is a dazzling contribution not just to
American history but to the American future.
*Congressman Jamie Raskin (Maryland)*
A brilliant history, analysis, and critique of one of the most
undemocratic elements of our supposed democracy—and another
anti-democratic device whose roots were partly racist.
*American Prospect*
Perfectly timed…Keyssar tells a riveting and winding tale about
attempts to reform the Electoral College and replace it with either
a national popular vote or a distribution of electors in proportion
to the state’s popular vote…His confrontation with racism in the
U.S. as it relates to electoral reform—a topic that isn’t often
viewed through this lens—is one of the strengths that make this
book well worth the read.
*LSE Review of Books*
Sets out to explain the persistence of a technique that in public
opinion polls has never accumulated support from a majority of
Americans…[Keyssar’s] telling, artfully balancing broad themes and
specific anecdotes, is both readable and valuable; knowing how we
got here is a useful prerequisite to charting how to get where we
want to be.
*Washington Times*
This is a powerful work twice over. Its contributions to the debate
over the Electoral College’s effects on our politics are profound.
No less important, though, are the fascinating accounts of the
changing rules governing presidential elections since the nation’s
founding, a turbulent and largely unknown history. Keyssar’s lucid
scholarship does justice to the past while it forcefully informs
the present.
*Sean Wilentz, author of No Property in Man*
Slavery and the origins of the Electoral College, the electors who
actually determine who will be president, are intricately
bound…Keyssar recreates the debates at the Constitutional
Convention that birthed the body that centuries later gave Trump
the presidency in 2016, though he lost the popular vote. Convention
participants were torn between the practical challenges of holding
a national election and the political balancing act between the
needs of states small and large, free and slave.
*Susan Smith Richardson, Center for Public Integrity*
[A] remarkable book.
*The Nation*
[A] comprehensive new history of the Electoral College.
*New York Times*
To fully explain how difficult the Electoral College is to
dislodge, Keyssar chronicles more than two centuries of
near-constant disputation and battle.
*Washington Monthly*
A masterpiece. Keyssar shows us that America’s Electoral College
has ever drifted on turbulent waters, surviving various near-misses
at reform both local and national. He leaves readers with the
humbling reminder that popular sovereignty can ossify the rules of
election, even as he lays bare the political vulnerabilities of the
Electoral College and the real possibilities for change.
*Daniel Carpenter, author of Reputation and Power*
Keyssar asks a simple question that seems to have an equally simple
answer—the small states would never allow it, so why even think
about it? Being the careful historian he is, he offers a complex
analysis proving that our presidential election system has long
been controversial; that serious efforts, now forgotten, were made
to alter it; and that the case for its amendment remains as
compelling, but also challenging, as ever. At this critical moment
in our history, he brilliantly engages one of the most vexing
problems in our working Constitution.
*Jack N. Rakove, author of The Annotated U.S. Constitution and
Declaration of Independence*
Our foremost historian of voting and elections explains the
frustrating experiences the nation has had in attempting to
eliminate—or even amend—the antiquated Electoral College. While the
procedures of self-government should be rational, or at least ones
Americans want, they are anything but, and Keyssar provides a
nuanced and eventful narrative as to why. The result is a
much-needed book that fills a gap in our national
self-understanding, which surely is the first step to making any
progress in rectifying the situation.
*Edward B. Foley, author of Presidential Elections and Majority
Rule*
To thoroughly understand the Electoral College, but also the nature
of institutional reform in general and American Constitutional
reform in particular, one could hardly do better.
*Liberal Currents*
A detailed history of the electoral college and the attempts to
change it…Enlivened by fascinating episodes in U.S. political
history.
*Australian Book Review*
A rigorous historian of the institution.
*New Yorker*
Pathbreaking historical analysis.
*Balkinization*
Excellent.
*Bloomberg*
I would definitely recommend it to anyone who wanted to properly
understand the Electoral College…It’s designed to inform the debate
in the US over whether or not it should be reformed, and if so, how
that could be achieved…Not only a masterful narrative history, but
a powerful political intervention…Deeply rewarding.
*Oxonian Review*
[A] definitive study.
*Jacobin*
Will surely remain one of the most detailed and scholarly
investigations into these serial attempts at reform, while also
offering a thoughtful analysis of the many different reasons for
their failure.
*New Left Review*
The most thorough study of our Electoral College debates ever
written…A magnum opus with many contributions to political
understanding.
*Claremont Review of Books*
Provides perhaps the most exhaustive treatment of the oft-maligned
body. Despite nearly a thousand attempts to reform or abolish it,
the Electoral College has persisted. Keyssar sets out to help
readers understand why this is the case. In rich detail, he
illustrates how the complex nature of the Electoral College and the
difficulties presented by the constitutional amendment process
largely explain its resilience…A must read for anyone interested in
understanding the Electoral College and its history.
*Choice*
Without question this is the best book ever written on the
electoral college. It destroys any pretense to the wisdom of the
framers in crafting the institution, and it points to a history of
repeated problems with it…Anyone who cares about American politics,
democracy, or the Constitution needs to read Why Do We Still Have
the Electoral College? It opens up our eyes to how we think about
our political process and to whose benefit it serves.
*New York Journal of Books*
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