Would alternative election change results?

During my 1949-50 school year at Cresco High School, the student debate topic proposed that the U.S. president be elected by popular vote, instead of by the Electoral College. My partner, Henry Elwood, and I took the affirmative position.

When we went to the Brindley tournament at the Teachers' College in Cedar Falls, we were required to take the negative side in two debates. I simply advocated a proposed “Lodge-Gossett” constitutional amendment. We won both debates.

That amendment would have abolished the “electors” as real people and preserved them only as mathematical abstractions. The number of “electors” in each state would be divided in proportion to the popular vote; the candidate with the largest total sum would win.

I wonder whether Sen. Henry Lodge, Rep. Ed Gossett or anyone else has calculated whether the Lodge-Gossett proposal would have done better or worse than the Electoral College in hypothetically electing the same people as a direct popular vote would have done.

Gerald Baker

Cedar Falls