[cheering] thank you for coming. Fortunes above 50 million. You may get that big, pitch in two cents so everyone else has a chance to make it. [cheers and applause] dr. Lara brown, that is a glimpse of the 2020 primary process. A process that attracted more than 20 democrats. Last time around, 17 gop candidates vying for the nomination. You have spent your academic career trying to understand and explain the electoral process. When you try to explain where we are today to people and how this process works, how do you explain it . Dr. Brown the thing you have to start with first is that competitiveness drives a lot of candidates. One of the things that is so interesting, when we really understand why there are so many candidates in the democratic primary field, why there are so many republicans in the 2016 field, it was because the presidency was seen as being up for grabs in both instances. In 2016, it was an open seat. There was disbelief that the there was this belief that the republican could win that seat from the democrats. So many republicans jumped in. When we look at 2020, you see President Trump is something of an embattled incumbent. That also sparks candidates in the Opposition Party to jump in and try to vie for the presidency. What should we know about the kind of people who threw their hats into the ring these days . Dr. Brown since 1976, our candidates have had more and more individuals who have claimed they are outsiders. First, they began as these outside washington politicians. Governors like jimmy carter, ronald reagan, and bill clinton. Now what we have seen in the last few cycles are individuals like President Trump saying, im not even from the political system at all. If you look at candidate tom steyers ads, hes running on the same line of donald trump. That he is a washington outsider and a businessman who can save the system, despite having no political experience before joining. We thought we would spend this hour with you learning how we got where we are today by really going through history. The major points in the process where the electoral system has changed. We have to go back to the beginning. You have written about, starting in the Continental Convention and the debate amongst our Founding Fathers, about the Selection Process for the president. I remember you phrasing it they are in a circular debate. What is important to know about what they were trying to achieve and what came out of it . Dr. Brown when we look back, we have to realize our framers were trying to do something that was not done around the world. They were trying to figure out how to elect an executive for the country. That was not something that was done all around the world. There were hereditary monarchs in power. As they looked out, they looked to governors of states and they tried to invent their own system. They said, should the congress elect the president . Then they said, no, if they do that, the president will be the creature of congress, meaning that congress will own the presidency. Then they said, should there be a direct popular election . They said, no, that would likely result in sort of any sort of consensus. Theyre going to be too much inos to go with it and practicalities at that moment in time. So they came upon a notion of the Electoral College. What this basically was was a way to say, lets get leaders from each state to go to their state capitals, have a meeting, and for the specific purpose, put forward names, vote on, if you will, two different people who could potentially be president and send them up to congress to determine who was actually the winner. That is really how it started. It started with this idea of, lets get some local leaders to help create some nominees. Of course, in the past couple decades, the debate has been raging about whether the Electoral College still works for a country of this size, complexity. Can you give us the pros and the cons . Dr. Brown the biggest thing in its favor is that it does have a tendency to force president ial candidate to campaign broadly and to win different states narrowly. It is more important to win a lot of states by 51 than a couple of states by 60 . What that does is ensures the president , in fact, represents most of the states in addition to most of the people. In other words, the Electoral College really does do what the framers had hoped, which was that it would be an office, the presidency itself, that represented the people through represent the people, but through their states. The combination of the house and the senate. The biggest problem with it is actually a problem the parties created themselves, and in fact is not related to the Electoral College. It is related to how each state allocates its electoral votes. All states but maine and nebraska allocate those votes in a winner take all manner. Meaning if you win by 51 , you when all of that states electors. A much more fair way would be for there to be essentially proportional representation by the awarding of those electors. So if one candidate won 51 , they get 51 of the electors. The other candidate who lost the state would still get 45 of the electors. That would do a better job of more approximating the Overall National popular vote. Is that debate going on in any state legislators today . Dr. Brown sort of. But we actually have is a lot of different Reform Efforts that are attempting to overturn how the Electoral College works. Mostly there is a National Popular vote reform that really argues what should happen is whoever wins the National Popular vote, that states electoral votes should go to that candidate. I will tell you i think that is a horrible idea and it is a horrible idea not because it seems unfair, but in fact because in practicality i think it would cause even more angst at the system than the system we have now. I cannot envision a scenario where a republican won the National Popular vote and everyone in california would say, yes, isnt it great . All of our electors should go to the republican candidate as well. That is not something i imagine californians would be pleased, to see all 55 electoral votes going to a republican candidate that they clearly did not vote for in the popular vote level. Going back to early history, George Washington by acclamation in two elections, but it became clear very early on the system was not functioning. What happened . Dr. Brown what is so fascinating is that this system almost immediately fell apart. So the framers had this notion that the Electoral College either would find a consensus candidate that everyone loved, like George Washington, or that there would essentially be a split decision. Because every state would put forward a favorite son. No one would have enough electoral ballots to get a majority, and as a result, the decision stayed among the top five according to the original constitution would go to the house of representatives. And then the house would divide into state delegations and vote for president. What really happened was that parties formed before the 1796 running of the presidency. Why did they form . Dr. Brown they formed for a couple reasons. Political science talks about the need for what we Call Coalition in the legislature. Basically, government would not be able to operate without parties. And what what we mean by that, imagine every piece of legislation you had to form a brandnew coalition every single time. It just would not form or function. So parties operate is what political scientists call long coalitions. They are basically groups of people with interests that are generally aligned. They agree to support each other and band together. With that, you are able to address more issues more quickly and efficiently than you would otherwise. These parties really formed in the early 1790s because during washingtons administration, there were a couple of issues that started to divide people very quickly. You saw the debt assumption bill, which was a bill where basically washington, d. C. , assumed all of the state step from the revolutionary war. That created some angst among southerners who did not want to see a powerful federal government. Early on there started to be this division between a party that looks at a strong federal government with International Interests and essentially a plan to improve the nation versus a party that was more interested in state and local power, a smaller federal government, and a more inward looking foreign policy. That separated pretty much right away around the 1794, 1793 timeframe. When did the first crisis occur . Dr. Brown the very first competitive election. In 1796, we have a situation where john adams is essentially the federalist nominee and Thomas Jefferson is the democratic nominee at the time, his party was called the democratic republicans. They basically were competing against each other. They each had different favored Vice President ial candidates, but when the balloting happened and every state voted for two people, it turned out john adams came in first and Thomas Jefferson came in second. All of a sudden, you have opposition partisans serving as president and Vice President in the same administration. That clued in everyone there was going to be some problems. The next election, 1800, was essentially a rematch, but now john adams is the incumbent president. Thomas jefferson is working with James Madison, speaker of the house and they are the Opposition Party. In that running of the election, Thomas Jefferson, who is now more popular than the incumbent president , running as this outsider against those in washington, so to speak. And you end up having Thomas Jefferson tying the Electoral College with his own Vice President ial pick, aaron burr. But because, at the time, there was no official casting of ballots for president and Vice President as separate ballots by the electors, aaron burr stayed silent and thought, maybe i can actually be made the president in the house of representatives vote if i just go along. Thanfederalist like me Thomas Jefferson, maybe i will be able to squeak out the presidency. That created, obviously, a Massive Division in washington over who should become president. On the 36th the ballot in the house of representatives, Thomas Jefferson was made the president of the United States. Clearly six was needed. Dr. Brown that was the 12th amendment to the constitution. Which what it did was force the electors to cast separate ballots. One for president , one for Vice President , and be clear in that. And then it reduced the overall number of individuals who basically, if there were a tie or no one received a majority, would go to the house of representatives. So it reduced it from five to three. The next election everyone studied in high school was the 1824 election. John quincy adams, henry clay, Andrew Jackson. What is important to know about that election and how did it impact the process Going Forward . Dr. Brown theres a couple things that are really important to know. Up until James Monroes presidency, this idea of how does the nominee get decided, really was not a controversy. Everyone understood john adams would be the successor to washington. And everyone understood James Madison would be the successor to Thomas Jefferson. The problem was now you had james monroe, who had been governor in virginia. He had been secretary of state under James Madison. And he then becomes president. Well lot of other people are , a starting to say, wait a minute. How come the virginians are consistently in this Office Getting nominated for this office and essentially winning this office . By the time munroes presidency is winding down, it is 1824 and competition has been brewing for years. People cannot wait to jump in. So now they have a lot of candidates and one of those was actually william crawford, who had been secretary of the treasury, if i recall, and crawford gets whats called the king caucus endorsement. So the king caucus was essentially a meeting of each partys congressional delegation to determine who should be the partys nominee. It is kind of derogatorily caucusd to as the kings because people outside washington were saying, wait a minute. You mean these congressional members get elected king . We are in a democratic country. You have this sense that the fix is in. Crawford gets this nomination, which might not have been so bad but for the fact that he had a very debilitating stroke and he was partially blind and mostly paralyzed. And yet he still wins the caucus endorsement. So the idea that all of a sudden, the presidency is going to somebody who was basically unable to fulfill the duties of the office raised the hackles of many other individuals, including Andrew Jackson, the war hero from the war of 1812 and his battle of new orleans fame, who basically is looking at this as, he is the outsider. He wants to run. And then there is John Quincy John adam son, who is now the senator from massachusetts and he is interested. And henry clay, speaker of the house. All of them jump in. All of them start contesting the king caucus endorsement by trying to get, basically, resolutions from their state and their state legislatures, saying isnt this great . We love our person. This should be the president. The Electoral College again essentially runs into a problem because the ballots are split. What we have is a situation where no one earns a majority of the votes and because it is now the top three, that means it is between john quincy adams, Andrew Jackson, and william crawford. And henry clay, who is speaker of the house, gets to essentially decide. So the former candidate who gets ousted because of the 12th amendment gets to help make the decision. He makes it in favor of john quincy adams, and that becomes the basis of Andrew Jackson and his supporters cry of a corrupt bargain. The whole system again turns into controversy by 1828. Jackson is successful in 1828 and it is the president that our current incumbent President Trump points to as his favorite in history. How did the election of Andrew Jackson change the system again . Dr. Brown it certainly changed in that Andrew Jackson was from tennessee, he was this war hero, he had a certain celebrity in the country. He also wanted to represent the common man. Interestingly enough, in 1828, he basically picked up William Crawfords campaign manager, who had been Martin Van Buren, who later becomes president. But Martin Van Buren helps Andrew Jackson to expand the basis of the parties. So the parties become this mass organization. By 1832, Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren had decided to adopt an innovation called the national convention, which was a way to bring all the state Party Leaders to one convention to choose the nominees instead of using this either state legislative resolution or a congressional caucus or king caucus. What was happening in the electorate . Who could vote . How was that changing . Dr. Brown generally speaking, what was going on was that white males were now enfranchised. So they reduce the property requirements that were in existence early in the republic. It was also true that the states had essentially moved to this system of winner take all in most of the electoral vote allocations. It was also true that states were no longer essentially choosing electors by the state legislature, determining who those electors were, and they were relying on the votes of the people in their states. The National Conventions, which start in 1830, there were three distinct periods in history of National Conventions. The national Party Leadership, best exemplified by Abraham Lincolns election. What was the story . Dr. Brown it takes some time for state Party Leaders to actually build up enough credibility to become delegates at their convention. We look to james polks nomination or Abraham Lincolns nomination. What you see are a lot of people who are delegates, managing these candidacies, and are the ones ensuring the vote for these individuals. They are in some ways more national Party Leaders than they are state Party Leaders. They are still senators, still representatives. They are sometimes governors, but more often than not, they are still people who had power in washington or had powerful networks nationally. James k. Polk would never have been the nominee in the Democratic Party had it not been for Andrew Jacksons mentorship and his maneuvering Martin Van Buren away from the nomination that year. How did Abraham Lincoln with a brandnew party, the Republican Party was just a few years old at that point, how did he maneuver through that system . Dr. Brown this is the interesting part. In these early years, so much was about creating a deadlock. If you created a deadlock in these conventions, what you could create through kind of the stage managing of different delegate activities, namely putting the name into nomination or giving a speech or creating a general uproarious noise when that persons name was called, you could essentially stagemanage this notion there was momentum behind an acceptable candidate. And so these individuals we think of as dark horses who came out of nowhere, they did not really come out of nowhere. They were people who were working within the convention to make sure that if a deadlock happened, if more than one ballot occurred, they would enter their favored candidacy into the process and work to essentially gin up a majority. There were deals cut. It was the quintessential kind of back room of politics that we think about. When was the first time president ial candidates started going to their own conventions . Dr. Brown they dont start fdr is theally big moment where he is there in 1932, he flies into the convention. It is a very big deal. There had been earlier instances of individuals showing up at the conventions, but it was not normal which is one of those amusing things. If youre going to be an acceptable candidate, you had to manage to become the nominee without being there. That is quite a trick, to have your supporters and friends put your name into nomination and run that whole process through. That is why in the late 1800s, the party bosses became so important. We have this whole era where cities where we were moving from an Agrarian Society to an industrial society. We had basically these party bosses who were running the political votes of their cities or their countries and the candidates would essentially go to them and begged their support. If the candidates pass muster, the bosses would maneuver on their behalf at the convention. It is interesting because by the time of William Mckinley in 1896, the reformers had taken hold. They were disgusted by this kind of corruption and the dealing. And in fact turn around mckinley tries to run a plan against the bosses. And what he does is, as a republican, garners the vote from southern delegates who have not yet been important because during that period of time, the south was solidly democratic in the general election and nobody had thought to include those delegates in the nomination process. During that period of time, three states became really important. Obvious,em would find new york and pennsylvania. The third is indiana. Why was indiana so powerful . Dr. Brown indiana was going back and forth between democrats and republicans. You had a very strong country party, meaning that everybody in the rural areas were in support of the democratic candidates. Those who were in the towns were republicans because the parties had switched coalitions. What we usually think of now, the republicans in rural areas and democrats in urban, at that point in time it was a different mix, but it was as competitive. So this really just comes down to there was essentially a divided population. An equally balanced population. And when a state is that way, it becomes a battleground state in the general election. That state then matters at every level. During that time period, there were two of those contested elections. 1876 and 1888. Benjamin harrison lost the popular vote, but won the Electoral College. If the party bosses were in control, why do we end up with two elections so close . Dr. Brown the same reason we are ending up with two elections in 2016 that were close. No systemspeaking, does very well when the country is basically at 5050. Difficult thing to decide an election when in fact votes split relatively equally. When we are talking between percentage point. The Electoral College tends to magnify because of this winner take all allocation, the votes of those states that the winner wins. Facte Electoral College in grows a candidates mandate and that is one of the things in favor of it. We can thing 1992, bill clinton only won 43 of the popular vote. He won a much larger Electoral College vote, which allowed them him to govern. It is interesting we have these inversions in the gilded age. The country was mobilized. We had 90 turnout regularly. We also had an equally divided country. It was literally a percentage point between the candidates that would determine the election. At that moment, the Electoral College does not work well. It can invert and you have to have another decision. 1876, it did not even go to the house of representatives. It went to a specially designed commission where we had basically had appointments of republicans and democrats to a commission to review the different contested states electoral ballots. There was one more republican on it than democrat. On every single vote republican voted republican. As a result, Rutherford B Hayes won even though the popular vote suggests tilden may well have. A difficult time for hayes establishing his legitimacy. In history, president s who have not won the popular vote how difficult is it for president s to establish themselves in a contested environment . Dr. Brown very hard. There is a sense the system is not working. What is interesting about it is that we read into the popular vote something we probably shouldnt. That is that it is the true measure of the nations will. We forget that the aggregated popular vote is something of an accident. What i mean by that is that the candidates do not make their strategies around the popular vote. They build their strategies around Electoral College vote. That means campaigning only happens in certain states and not others. That means turnout varies wildly across the states. In a state where people feel as though there vote does not matter, that popular vote that comes out of the state may not have the same kind of in states that are vying for every ballot. We have to realize the aggregated popular vote just does not contain the kind of meaning i think we would like it to have. The best way i always say and i think most political Scientists Say to think about the Electoral College is it is more like the world series than the super bowl. It does not matter how many runs you have in each game. You have to win four games. We saw the Washington Nationals this last year. They had many runs down in houston. Then they came home to washington dc. They did not win. It looked as though they might lose the series if they did not win another game. When you aggregate the runs across all seven games, does the winner of the person who has the most runs, should they win . No. The Electoral College says essentially it is the most states. Thanks to the Washington Nationals. We are now in the age of moving images. We are going to show one from 1912. An important year because the incumbent president , taft, was challenged by Theodore Roosevelt. What happened to the process when Theodore Roosevelt ended up challenging his own president in that year . He ended up running as a thirdparty candidate. What happened to the process . Dr. Brown what was so fascinating about 1912 is you have a former president saying i want to run again and i think my party should let me run again, and the party says, no. We are going to go with the current president , taft. Roosevelt mounts this run really because he does not win his partys nomination. In doing so, he divides the party and as a result, Woodrow Wilson ends up winning the election. That party, the Republican Party, really does divide in such a way that it is not able to reform in any sort of dominant way for years. It is true that the republicans come back after Woodrow Wilsons presidency for that decade, but then what we see is that Franklin Roosevelt is able to pick up that coalition and run with it. The democrats are ensconced for many years. At the primary level, and what was important about that period, was that people were questioning party bosses. The progressives who really got going in the late 1890s and carried through all the way to Franklin Roosevelts presidency had really been about changing the nature of who were the delegates at these National Conventions . They said it is not fair that it is these party bosses or National Elites. People should decide. And the people need to have a way to decide. What we saw was that the primary election was created as a way to select delegates to the convention. What was the first state to hold a primary . Dr. Brown florida is the first to adopt a primary ballot. Wisconsin really takes it forward because the governor pushes forward on having primaries in 1905. What are the important periods for the evolution of the electoral process . Dr. Brown the most important thing to realize is these first primaries were what we generally call beauty contests. They were not necessarily aligned with the delegate in the vote. You would vote in your primary, but that did not necessarily bind anyone in your state to a certain delegate or a delegate to the convention. As a result, the primaries for most of the 1900s become just a way that a candidate can demonstrate their electability. This is why everyone points to a john f. Kennedy running in the West Virginia primary because what he was saying to his party is, look. I am catholic and i can still do well in a very protestant state. He runs, he does well. The Democratic Party says, yes, he is electable. In 1968, this system of beauty contests and National Elites managing the delegates reaches another crisis and comes to a head. We have a video of that convention, which anyone who was alive will remember. Just a quick question because we are going to see it on television. In the 1950s, television arrived. After that, madison avenue. How did those additions to our culture impact the president ial Selection Process . Dr. Brown it just starts to change the notion of who is an acceptable candidate. Who should people look to as somebody who can lead . This is where republicans selecting eisenhowers happening. This is a throwback all the way to Andrew Jackson or to any of the other generals, grant, who won in different points in our history. There was this sense that the only way the republicans could win against the Democratic Coalition was to bring a war hero onto the ticket and create a coalition behind him. The prior nominee had actually managed the kind of delegate vote getting for eisenhower, and it is really because of his efforts that in fact warren ended up on the Supreme Court. Warren was interested in the nomination. Dooley convinced him to get his votes to eisenhower. Eisenhower appoints warren. The warren court is history which would not have occurred if not for those political maneuvers. The nation is in the middle of the vietnam war. Lets look at what was happening at the podium at the democratic convention. I proudly accept the nomination of our party. [cheers and applause] we have heard hard and sometimes bitter debate, but i submit that this is the debate and this is the work of a free people. The work of an open convention and a Political Party responsive to the needs of this nation. Why was 1968 a crisis . Dr. Brown because it was not really an open convention. President Lyndon Johnson had worked very hard in the background after he had stepped down from running to manage those delegates and ensure his Vice President , hubert humphrey, would garner the nomination. Those individuals running in the primaries and those antiwar candidates in particular, mccarthy and mcgovern, their supporters were enraged that they did not have a way to be important on the floor, to have any votes. They could not believe humphreys was going to secure the democratic nomination. With that, there were protests and riots in chicago that became very violent. The democrats basically said, ok. The only way to get out of this is to reform the process. They established what became the Mcgovern Frazier reform. The most important part of the reforms was that the delegates had to be named and selected prior to the primary in those states. What we saw was that the primaries were being bound and linked to the delegate Selection Process. If you win as a delegate, you are bound to vote for the candidate you are elected for. Dr. Brown yes. It is still an interesting thing in that the parties tinker with delegate Selection Processes. Different states are awarded different numbers of delegates. The democrats also insured in their reforms that there was a broader diversity of delegates. They did put affirmative action, put quotas. The Democratic Party, the delegates have to be divided evenly in terms of women and men. It has to have a representative sample essentially of minorities. If theres 40 of the population in the state are minorities, that delegation better have something close to 40 of its delegates going to the convention be minorities. Political junkies and reporters would love the idea of a brokered convention. This was the deathknell of a brokered convention. Dr. Brown what it meant was what you accrued, you knew you would get a vote on the first ballot. That shifts the process to the primaries. Dr. Brown it does. When did iowa and New Hampshire become so important . Dr. Brown iowa really makes its mark with jimmy carter in 1976. You look to the process in 1976. There was a large number of democrats who were running. Richard nixon had stepped down after watergate. Gerald ford had taken over. He was not a popular president. There was a lot of competition. The people running were washington senators who were saying, look, we are here, we are going to clean out the corruption. We were part of essentially overthrowing the republicans who were engaged in not so great things for the country. Jimmy carter comes in from iowa i mean, from georgia, and he comes in after iowa, he places second. Like clintons second place in 1992, it rocketed his momentum upward and he careened right through the primaries and won the nomination, which surprised a lot of delegates. The democrats on the heels of that decided they needed to tinker with their process. That was when the added superdelegates. The other thing that happened in 1976 was the resurgence of nationally televised debates. Everyone learned about the 1960 jfk nixon debates, but they went on hiatus. What impact did they have on the electoral process . Dr. Brown debates are interesting because theres a lot of studies that show the debates are not in fact what decides the election. It is in fact the discussion about who won the debate that becomes more important. One of the things that is true is that the debates did create more of a sense that having a television present, being able to connect with voters through the television camera, was in fact going to be more important than the process of going out and shaking hands in different states. The debates have had really mixed effects. They have this situation now where generally speaking, our primaries and our process is so much more something that approximates a reality show then it is necessarily the candidates getting to know the voters, the voters getting to know the positions, and the voters choosing the candidates who are best for their party. I want to get to where we are today. Briefly i would like to hear about you so people know. You have been an academic studying this process all your life. What sparked your interest . Dr. Brown i have had a lot of iterations of my life. I did start off in college in the late 1980s and early 1990s watching the fall of the wall, the berlin wall of course, the end of the cold war, and the beginning of bill clintons presidency. I was in california during the riots that happened, drink the o. J. Simpson trial. There was a lot going on in the early 1990s, which made a lot of us in california say, wow, politics are important and we should engage. I spent the 1990s engaged in democrat politics. I ended up serving in bill Clintons Administration at the department of education. I worked as a corporate liaison. I returned to academia in the early 2000s and have been there ever since. I am fascinated by politics mostly because i have seen it at every angle. I have seen it as a partisan, i have seen as a government appointee, i have seen it as an academic. I have even seen it from the position of the business community. I also worked in business as a consultant and did a lot of things for different corporations. You also married someone involved your Wikipedia Page says someone known to the cspan audience, major garrett. What are the dinner conversations like . Dr. Brown major is really a phenomenal journalist. He and i always have this tension in one of our conversations. I, as an academic am always theorizing. What hypothesis can i test . He always responds by saying, this is what we know now. Journalists report what is happening and are not interested or focused on longterm consequences. They are in the middle of the first draft of history. As a political scientist, i am always trying to understand history and what it means for the future. Your graduate school turns out a lot of people who become campaign managers, etc. When did they become important to the process . Dr. Brown right about the time that essentially the Mcgovern Fraser reforms come in. As television is taking off, as managed campaigns become important, but also the parties lost power. We have to understand that consultants became away for there to be a continuation of political knowledge and experience that used to reside within the party. Now it resides within the consultants. When the parties lost their power, the consultant took over. That is good and bad. It is true when we look at someone like david axelrod, karl rove, they know extraordinary political history and they have experience. The problem is a lot of the candidates they are managing and putting forward have very little knowledge of politics and how governance actually works. We have this problem now where candidates keep saying they going to outsource politics to the people who know things, but then they are running against all of the people who do know things. The process today also costs millions of dollars. Hiring staff, the media, the places. When did money become a factor . Dr. Brown all of these things rise together. Largely because the parties lose their force. A colleague of mine talks a lot about week parties and strong and strongak parties partisanship. That is the era in which we are. The parties dont have that much control. The candidates have more control so long as they can raise the money. And yet the candidates dont really have the political knowledge to advance their positions, and that is where the consultants come in. There is a debate that continues about iowa and New Hampshire and their representation of the electorate overall. There is a discussion about a National Primary or compressed regional primaries. We talked about the Electoral College. Are any of these fixes once that would have a substantive and positive impact on the primary and elections that we have . Dr. Brown the National Primary would only make a lot of the things we see right now worse. The cost of elections would skyrocket. Only people with very broad name recognition or celebrity would win. In National Primary is probably one of the worst reforms we could implement. If we were doing it in a rational way have a rotating regional primaries so that different elections have different groups of states go together, which would allow focused retail campaigning. The situation we have right now is really that iowa and New Hampshire were grandfathered in and became important, and now there is no way to move them out of the process. Nevada and South Carolina have been added to the mix of early states. You can see that often they are not necessarily as decisive as you might think. The basic problem is that you are talking about a tradeoff between money and voters. If you really want the voters to get to know the candidates, you need to have fewer states. If you really want everybody to have a fair shot at electing the candidate, then you need to have those candidates have a lot of money. Neither system is really fair. We are going to close. The last 16 years we have had two contested elections. The last one was in the Electoral College, not the popular vote. The historic moment in the house of representatives in 2000 when one of the aspirants pronounced the results for his opponents. Lets watch. The state of the votes for president of the United States as delivered to the president of the senate is as follows. The number of electors appointed to vote is 538, of which a majority is 270. George w. Bush of the state of texas has received for president of the United States 271 votes. Al gore of the state of tennessee has received 266 votes. This announcement of the state of the vote by the president s of the senate, the person elected in Vice President each for the term beginning on the 20th day of january 2001 and shall be entered together with a list of the votes on the journals of the senate and the house of representatives. May god bless our new president and our new Vice President and may god bless the United States of america. [applause] we have about a minute left. We start off talking about the Founding Fathers and how they created the system. What does that moment say about the american system . Dr. Brown that is an extraordinary moment. You have an active statesmanship. An individual who was running for election who decided not to create a constitutional crisis by essentially ignoring the Supreme Court decision. He could have recognized the florida representatives petitioning to be heard and to throw out floridas ballots. He did not. It is so important to realize that really critical junctures in our countrys history, statesmanship has been all but has kept us going. Bruce ackerman writes an extraordinary book about precisely that failure of the Founding Fathers around making the Vice President the president of the senate who would announce that ballot. Thank you for your time. Dr. Brown thank you for having me. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] all q a programs are available at cspan. Org. Next sunday, we talk with she talks about tension between the president and the press. That is next sunday night at 8 00 eastern on cspans q a. Next, our live, three our washington journal program. At 10 00 a. M. , Elizabeth Warren campaigns in New Hampshire. At noon, eastern, a form on the relevance of international institutions, such as the United Nations and world bank
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