(Reviewed by JD Jung)
“The health of any democracy, no matter what its type of status, depends on a small technical detail: the conduct of elections.” – Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset.
Unfortunately, the United States electoral system has enormous vulnerabilities, and the Constitution provides no remedy for dealing with them. If a president that has been elected by corrupt methods or with the help of foreign actors, there is no recourse other than impeachment.
Political science professor Alan Hirsch exposes these problems and provides a detailed history of the Electoral College (and even earlier backroom deals) in A Short History of Presidential Election Crises.
According to Hirsch, there were four times in history – 1800, 1824, 1876 and 2000 –in which a presidential election had no clear winner. Many elections were close enough to which an error in just a few states could have affected the outcome. Note that this was even before the current era of computer hacking.
There were also five times in U.S. history –1824, 1876, 1888, 2000 and 2016–in which the candidate who received the most popular votes, did not win the election.
Hirsch not only provides an in-depth explanation of these events but also promotes possible remedies for resolving contested elections. Some include Constitutional Amendments, and one does not. He also gives us alternatives to the electoral college, a system that was shaped by slavery and white supremacy.
So, with all this knowledge, why hasn’t there been any motivation on the part of legislators to change the way Americans conduct elections? Haven’t we learned anything from history? Hirsch delves into these questions also.
This is what makes me personally skeptical of any potential changes, even though the current system only serves to disenfranchise the American public. The Senate refuses to act on critical election security bills, despite what the FBI has discovered.
Still, I found the history particularly enlightening as it helps to explain how we got to where we are today.
I know there have been many books recently published on American elections, but A Short History of Presidential Election Crises explains it in a detailed, but still concise and fascinating way.
