A firm majority of Americans have declared their support for direct election of the president since June 1944, when the Gallup Poll first asked a question on the subject as Franklin D. Roosevelt was preparing to run, successfully, for his unprecedented (and, because of the 22nd Amendment adopted in 1951, never to be emulated) fourth term as president. In that survey, 65 percent supported direct election; only 23 percent opposed it.
Since then, support has varied from a high of 81 percent shortly after Richard Nixon's victory (with 43 percent of the popular vote) in 1968 to a low of 58 percent, which, interestingly, was the result less than two years before, in January 1967. The last Gallup Poll on the issue was apparently taken just before the 2004 election, when 61 percent of respondents declared themselves in favor of direct election, while 35 percent disapproved. As can readily be ascertained, a remarkably small number of Americans currently have “no opinion” on the matter.
So why has no change taken place? The answer is dismayingly obvious: The United States Constitution is the hardest to change of all constitutions in the world (as demonstrated by University of Houston political scientist Donald Lutz in a comprehensive study of a cross-section of national constitutions).
The Article V obstacle
In my book, “Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (and How We the People Can Correct It),” I point to – and criticize – a number of undemocratic features of our Constitution, but special opprobrium should be directed at Article V, which structures the process of formal constitutional amendment. Not only does it have the direct effect of making near impossible any significant changes in the Constitution – the last such change was arguably the 22nd Amendment, well over a half-century ago, with the five subsequent amendments being of little or no practical importance – it has the deleterious indirect effect of stifling any general debate about the desirability of constitutional change, especially with regard to “unsexy” structural issues such as the Electoral College (in contrast with such “hot-button” issues as, say, flag-burning or same-sex marriage).
Generally speaking, to concede that one's proposals require constitutional amendment is to consign them to immediate oblivion and to get one labeled as quixotic, at best, or a flake at worst. One might, as a matter of fact, apply this analysis even to proponents of “hot-button” change, for none of them can seriously believe there is any real prospect of change given the barriers placed by Article V. Instead, one should analyze such proposals as throwing red meat at the base. Unfortunately, there is no base sufficiently excited by the Electoral College or by other structural defects in the American system to generate opportunistic “meat-throwing.”
Still, there are suggestions to “reform” the Electoral College without having to surmount the barriers generated by Article V. The best known, at least at the present, is that identified with FairVote, which is pressing the adoption, by the largest states, of a de facto interstate compact by which the state legislatures of the 11 largest states would mandate that the state's electors cast their votes for the person who comes in first in the national vote.