Program Directory

As the US Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion nears, Radi­o­lab cov­ers the clos­est we ever came to abol­ish­ing the Elec­toral College.

In the 1960s, then-Pres­i­dent Lyn­don John­son approached an ambi­tious young sen­a­tor known as the Kennedy of the Mid­west to tweak the way Amer­i­cans elect their pres­i­dent. The more Sen­a­tor Birch Bayh looked into the elec­toral col­lege, the more he believed it was a tick­ing time bomb hid­den in the Con­sti­tu­tion that some­one need­ed to defuse. With over­whelm­ing sup­port in Con­gress, the endorse­ment of mul­ti­ple pres­i­dents, and polling show­ing that over 80 per­centof the Amer­i­can pub­lic sup­port­ed abol­ish­ing it, it looked like he might just pull it off. So why do we still have the elec­toral col­lege? And will we actu­al­ly ever get rid of it?