“The electoral college was an unwanted child from the beginning,” writes Joseph J. Ellis, author of “American Dialogue: The Founders and Us.” Ellis explains:
“Born in Philadelphia in mid-August 1787, when most delegates to the Constitutional Convention were eager to escape the heat and humidity and go home, it was the fruit of a compromise between the two warring factions at the convention: those who wished to revise the Articles of Confederation and retain sovereignty in the states, and those who wished to replace the articles by shifting sovereignty to a fully empowered national government.
. . .
Neither side was happy with the result.”
Fortunately, the Constitution does not require us to continue to be saddled with our current system. As Ellis explains:
“There is nothing in the Constitution that requires an elector to vote for the winner in his or her state, a loophole that might offer a way around the amendment impasse.”
In other words, if states agree to give there electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, we could finally be free from a system that no one really wanted in the first place.