Ross Douthat Quotes
Time and again a close election leads to hand-wringing about the need for Electoral College reform; time and again, politicians and parties respond to the college's incentives, and more capacious and unifying majorities are born.
Douthat, Ross. "Why We Still Need the Electoral College." The New York Times, The New York Times Company, 2016.
Jefferson thought that the possibility that a man could become President even though more Americans voted for his opponent was undemocratic and a great flaw in our Constitution. It has actually happened several times and each time the Electoral College debate renewed, but there has never been enough concern to produce a Constitutional Amendment.
The margin of victory was 50,000 votes; however, there were accusations that Buchanan had “bought” the election.
The column was written in the midst of the confusing 2000 Presidential election.
Madison was right on most things, but got this one wrong. Of course he did not anticipate the era of mass communication which makes demagoguery in large areas possible.
Al Gore had substantially won the popular vote but needed Florida to win the electoral vote. There had been a series of vote counting irregularities with many people being denied the right to vote to the point that no one was sure who had won Florida. The election moved from the ballot box to the courts and the Florida Supreme Court ruled that there should be some recounts in areas where Bush had supposedly won. The Bush forces and the Republicans appealed to the Supreme Court where the judges all reversed their traditional positions to support the party who had nominated them. Liberals who usually voted to have the Federal government override the states, voted for Florida to be upheld. Conservatives who usually supported the right of the States to decide such things without Federal Interference, voted to overturn the State Supreme Court. There were 5 Republicans and 6 Democrats and George W. Bush won the election by one judge’s vote.
The irony of this statement is that Kennedy then selected Lyndon Johnson as his running mate. Johnson, most experts agree, was able to swing Texas into the Democratic tally, and many of those same experts generally agree with Kennedy’s point but believe that his election was the only exception to the general rule in modern times.
This is not just a theoretical possibility. It has occurred several times. The latest was on the 1990 election where Gore got half a million more votes than George W. Bush, but Bush became President.
Ross Gregory Douthat (/ˈdaʊθət/) (born 1979) is an American conservative political analyst, blogger, author and New York Times columnist. He was a senior editor of The Atlantic. He has written on a variety of conservative topics, including the state of Christianity in America and "sustainable decadence" in contemporary society.
