I think the 24th amendment would make the original elector system debatable. It can be interpreted as granting a right to individual citizens to vote in an election for President. Granted, it says it can’t be abridged by a poll tax, but that doesn’t change that it calls the vote itself a right.
Section. 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.
Section. 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
That’s a very broad interpretation of the 24th Amendment. It addresses barriers to enfranchisement of black Americans, as you noted via poll taxes, but never addresses the macro structure of voting in order to select electors who will in turn vote for a candidate.
Well, then, perhaps instead of restoring the power to choose electors to state legislators, possibly violating the 24th Amendment, we should go to the system some of the founders actually intended: voter choosing electors by electoral district.
The number of electoral districts in each state would equal the number of congressional districts + 2. Per the 24th amendment, we would have to list the President/VP on the ballot. However, we would only need one constitutional amendment to go back to using the names of actual electors instead, as the founders intended, leaving the President and VP candidates entirely out of it and having elector candidates compete for the people’s vote in each district.
PING!
I read the 24th Anendment as saying that *if* there is an election for president, senator, etc. that the voter can’t be made to pay a poll tax. It doesn’t prevent a state from authorizing its governor to appoint U.S. senators when there’s a vacancy, and it wouldn’t prevent a state from changing its rules so that state legislators elect the presidential electors.
I once read a law-journal article arguing that the 14th Amendment prohibits states from reestablishing the election of presidential electors by state legislators, and claiming that what had been a “common practice prior to the 14th Amendment. I wrote to the author (who was an acquaintance of a friend of mine) to point out that between 1832 and 1860, SC was the only state in which the state legislature elected the state’s presidential electors, and that two different states had state legislatures elect their presidential electors within the first three elections after ratification of the 14th Amendment (FL in 1868 and CO in 1876). The author admitted that he had been mistaken regarding antebellum presidential elections but insisted that the 1868 and 1876 precedents were isolated events at times in which it was not practical to hold a popular election (FL had just been readmitted to the Union after the Civil War, and CO had just been admitted as the 38th state). Of course, 10 other former Confederate states also were readmitted during Reconstruction and plenty of other states joined the Union soon prior to presidential elections and managed to hold a popular vote (heck, MI held a presidential election prior to it formally being admitted to the Union in 1837, and the electoral votes cast by their presidential electors were counted by Congress, so “not enough time” was not an excuse). I don’t think that there is anything in the Constitution that would prohibit a state l from deciding to empower its state legislature with the election of its presidential electors.
That being said, I think that it would be a terrible idea to give politicians in the state legislature the sole authority to elect a state’s presidential electors. Citizens should let politicians take their vote away only from their cold, dead hands. While the GOP currently has legislative majorities in states with over 270 electoral votes, that’s a recent development, and having state legislatures elect presidential electirs would have resulted in Ronald Reagan losing both the 1980 and 1984 elections to Carter and Mondale, respectively. So, while I think that states should explore apportioning electoral votes by congressional district (but would recommend that several states act in concert so that it doesn’t inadvertently harm the GOP presidential nominee), I would oppose any effort to have state legislators replace the voters in the election of presidential electors (save in exigent circumstances, such as if there was a popular vote in the state and the Republican won but courts tie up the certification, in which case I would recommend that the state legislature step in and elect the Republican candidate’s electors prior to the meeting date for the Electoral College).