1 hr 11 min
S2E27: Jan. 6th Insurrection - History of America's Election Violence, Electoral College & Why Our Elections Are Producing Minority Winners - As Opposed To Majority Winners History Behind News Program
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- History
Disputing the outcome of the 2020 presidential election continues to play a major role in GOP politics. This begs the question: how have election disputes been handled in our history? Are we progressing at election dispute resolution in the march of our history? Or are we regressing?
Intertwined with those questions is the quagmire of election disputes themselves. Has our Constitution created a working system for us? This one is a trick question for two reasons. First, our electoral college system now is not the same one that our founders envisaged. Second, the election system that we think we have is not what we actually have in practice. In one particular aspect, our founders wanted majority winners in our elections, specifically with respect to presidential elections. But under our current system, a candidate can win the White House with a minority of the national and state popular votes.
My guest, Professor Edward Foley, analyzes all of this for us, gives us models from history on how election disputes should be resolved, and then shares anecdotes of election-related violence, and one frightening election that almost caused a second civil war.
Professor Foley is the author of Presidential Elections and Majority Rule, and also Ballot Battles: The History of Disputed Elections in the United States, which was named a Finalist for the David J. Langum Prize in American Legal History and listed as one of 100 “must-read books about law and social justice”.
He holds the Ebersold Chair in Constitutional Law at The Ohio State University, where he also directs its election law program. He is a contributing opinion columnist for the Washington Post, and for the 2020 election season, he served as an NBC News election law analyst.
And here is the link to my conversation with Daniel Okrent about Prohibition and the 1920 census (S2E24), which I also discuss in this podcast episode.
I hope you enjoy these two episodes,
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
HIGHLIGHTS: get podcast highlights in your inbox.
SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Click to follow us on Twitter
ThePeel.news is available wherever you get your podcast.
---
Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
Disputing the outcome of the 2020 presidential election continues to play a major role in GOP politics. This begs the question: how have election disputes been handled in our history? Are we progressing at election dispute resolution in the march of our history? Or are we regressing?
Intertwined with those questions is the quagmire of election disputes themselves. Has our Constitution created a working system for us? This one is a trick question for two reasons. First, our electoral college system now is not the same one that our founders envisaged. Second, the election system that we think we have is not what we actually have in practice. In one particular aspect, our founders wanted majority winners in our elections, specifically with respect to presidential elections. But under our current system, a candidate can win the White House with a minority of the national and state popular votes.
My guest, Professor Edward Foley, analyzes all of this for us, gives us models from history on how election disputes should be resolved, and then shares anecdotes of election-related violence, and one frightening election that almost caused a second civil war.
Professor Foley is the author of Presidential Elections and Majority Rule, and also Ballot Battles: The History of Disputed Elections in the United States, which was named a Finalist for the David J. Langum Prize in American Legal History and listed as one of 100 “must-read books about law and social justice”.
He holds the Ebersold Chair in Constitutional Law at The Ohio State University, where he also directs its election law program. He is a contributing opinion columnist for the Washington Post, and for the 2020 election season, he served as an NBC News election law analyst.
And here is the link to my conversation with Daniel Okrent about Prohibition and the 1920 census (S2E24), which I also discuss in this podcast episode.
I hope you enjoy these two episodes,
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
HIGHLIGHTS: get podcast highlights in your inbox.
SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Click to follow us on Twitter
ThePeel.news is available wherever you get your podcast.
---
Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
1 hr 11 min