Last Thursday morning, in one of the smaller function rooms at the National Press Club, in Washington, an ad-hoc bunch of amateurs, once-weres might-bes, and goo-goos floated an initiative that, with a little luck, could enable our ramshackle republic to take a long, and long overdue, step towar a more perfect union. The idea behind their initiative is this: that the President of the United States should be elected by the people of the United States
This idea is neither new nor outlandish, but for most of the past couple of centuries it has been dismissed as unachievable. The Electoral College is enshrined in the Constitution itself, so getting rid of it would require the concurrence of two-thirds of both houses of Congress plus three-quarters of the state legislatures. That's not going to happen. But maybe it doesn't have to. The promoters of the Campaign for a National Popular Vote, as they're calling themselves, have come up with an elegant finesse. |