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Popular election of the president is not a new idea. It was proposed in its simplest form by James Wilson, one of the lesser known delegates from Pennsylvania, at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. His argument was that, inasmuch as the presidency was a national office, it should be chosen by popular vote regardless of state. Neither the Nationalists nor the States' Men were receptive to the argument, and it went nowhere.

The recipe for electing the president was cobbled together in the final days of the Convention. Nobody was satisfied with it, but it was the best the combined minds of the Convention could come up with.

In December 1829, Andrew Jackson, in his annual message to Congress, argued in favor of a constitutional amendment to elect the president by popular vote. Jackson argued that we were no longer a republic, but a democracy, and the Constitution needed to be updated to reflect that fact. (He also proposed direct election of senators.) Jackson's idea was too far out in front of the public, and it went nowhere.

After the close call in 1968, several plans were brought forward. One was a revival of Jackson's 1829 suggestion. The other, proposed by Republican senators Everett Dirksen of Illinois and Karl Mundt of South Dakota, suggested granting each congressional district one electoral vote and each state two electoral votes.

Both ideas continued to gather adherents in the Seventies, but then the momentum went out of the movement.

Maine and Nebraska, however, decided to follow the Dirksen-Mundt idea on their own. Both states assign electoral votes by congressional district and assign two votes to the state in general.