Jesse Wegman of The New York Times editorial board and author of Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College, William Ewald, professor of philosophy and law at the University of Pennsylvania, and Amel Ahmed of the University of Massachusetts Amherst explore the Electoral College’s controversial origins, the influence of founder James Wilson, and the many attempts to reform it over the years. Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates the discussion.
Participants
- Jesse Wegman is a member of The New York Times editorial board, and the author of the new book Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College. He was previously a senior editor at The Daily Beast and Newsweek, a legal news editor at Reuters, and the managing editor of The New York Observer.
- William Ewald is professor of law and philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of an often-cited article in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review on the philosophical foundations of comparative law, “What Was it Like to Try a Rat?” He is currently at work on a book, The Style of American Law, that examines, from a comparative perspective, the distinctive character of American law. Ewald has written two articles about James Wilson for the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law.
- Amel Ahmed is associate professor of political science and Associate Provost for Equity and Inclusion at the University of Massachussetts-Amherst. She is author of Democracy and the Politics of Electoral System Choice: Engineering Electoral Dominance and written for various journals, including Comparative Political Studies, Perspectives on Politics, and the Journal of Politics. Ahmed has written about the Electoral College for popular outlets such as The American Prospect.
- Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public about the U.S. Constitution. Rosen is also professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.
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