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The Electoral College was nearly abolished in 1970


The House approved a constitutional amendment to dismantle the indirect voting system, but it was killed in the Senate by a filibuster.

“The conception of political equality from the Declaration of Independence, to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, to the Fifteenth, Seventeenth, and Nineteenth Amendments can mean only one thing: one person, one vote,” wrote Justice William O. Douglas in the majority opinion for Gray v. Sanders. Bayh’s skillful work garnering bipartisan support for the 25th Amendment caught the eye of President Lyndon Johnson, who tasked the young senator with addressing the Electoral College. That’s the moment when Gallup registered 80 percent approval for ending the Electoral College and a wide variety of high-profile political groups threw their support behind Bayh’s amendment: the American Bar Association, the Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO, the League of Women Voters and more.

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