50 years ago today, at almost this precise moment, the last serious effort to abolish the Electoral College by constitutional amendment and replace it with a national popular vote died on the floor of the Senate. 1/

A year earlier, the amendment had passed the House of Representatives overwhelmingly, by a vote of 339-70 -- well over the 2/3s threshhold. 2/

More than 80 percent of Americans supported the change to a popular vote, according to Gallup.

Democrats, Republicans, city dwellers, rural people. The Chamber of Commerce. The League of Women Voters. Richard goddamned Nixon! 3/

A NYT survey of state legislatures found that 30 had strong majority support for ratification. Six more were close. Only 6 states were hard no's.

So: Why did what should've been the 26th Amendment die?

Short answer: Southern segregationists. 4/

Strom Thurmond, James Eastland, Sam Ervin -- the descendants of slaveholders themselves, and still fuming about their failure to filibuster the Civil Rights Act to death 6 years earlier -- killed off the last real chance America had to elect its president by popular vote. 5/

They knew that the survival of the white power structure throughout the South depended on the disenfranchisement of black voters, either directly or (post Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts) more indirectly. 6/

One indirect way was through the statewide winner-take-all law for awarding presidential electors. All southern states, like most states in the country, use this method, and it erases all voters who choose the candidate with fewer votes. In the South, that was black voters. 7/

Under a national popular vote, Thurmond and the others knew, those black voters would count just as much as they did. South Carolina would no longer be in the bag for conservatives. So they killed the amendment (they used other rationales in public of course). 8/

Here's the interesting part: They were assisted by black and Jewish leaders in the big northern cities like NYC and Chicago. Why? Because NY was the biggest swing state at the time, and racial and ethnic minorities in urban areas decided how it swung. 9/

In other words: they got an unearned benefit from the Electoral College under winner-take-all laws, just like the southern segregationists. 10/

So! Contrary to popular belief, it was not the "small states" that defeated the amendment and protected the Electoral College. Many small-state senators were on board. It was the southerners, with an assist from a few specific northern constituencies. 11/

The moral: No one ever defends the Electoral College on principle -- or not accurately, anyway. They defend it because they think it helps them win. The moment it doesn't, they see it for the antidemocratic machine that it is. See, e.g.: https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/266038556504494082

So, on this 50th anniversary of the day we fumbled our best chance to take a major step toward direct popular election of the president, pour one out for Sen. Birch Bayh, the Indianan who did more than anyone to help get us to that moment. 13/

Bayh died last year, at 91, after spending the rest of his Senate career and then in private life fighting for a popular vote. His failure to make it happen in 1970 remained the biggest regret of his life. 14/

And when you're done toasting Bayh, remember that nearly 1/3 of all our amendments to the Constitution have expanded voting rights or reformed our franchise in a way that makes it more inclusive and more democratic. 15/

The popular vote is the natural culmination of that arc of democratization. As Bayh said in 1966, the idea is no more radical "than if we suggested the advantages of grounding an open-cockpit biplane in favor of a supersonic jet." 16/

Bayh's effort was one of ~800 attempts to amend or abolish the College. It came closer than any in history. Its failure should not discourage us, but remind us that the principles of one person one vote and majority rule are always at the heart of the American republic.

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PS: For what it's worth, James Madison also hated the winner-take-all rule, which is not in the Constitution. So much so that in 1823 he proposed an amendment prohibiting states from using it.

PPS: Madison and Bayh are the only two Americans to have successfully authored multiple amendments to the Constitution.

PPPS: Last point, I promise!

If you think this story shows the sheer hopelessness of trying to reform our system of electing the president, wait until Texas turns blue. It's going to happen, and sooner than we probably think.