So it has happened again. A close presidential election has led to recriminations, cries of fraud, and talk of tainted mandates. Just as predictably, the 2000 election has inspired calls to reform the Electoral College—predictably, that is, because such proposals have followed every close presidential contest since the beginning of the Republic. The only difference is that this time no one asked why there’s such a long delay between election and inauguration.

The controversy goes back to America’s first contested presidential election, in 1796, when John Adams edged Thomas Jefferson by three electoral votes. On January 6, 1797 — a month before the votes would officially be counted, though the results had already been leaked — Rep. William L. Smith of South Carolina introduced the first constitutional amendment to reform the Electoral College. Between Smith’s initial sally and 1889, the centennial of the Constitution’s adoption, more than 160 such amendments were introduced in Congress. From 1889 through 1946 there were 109 proposed amendments, from 1947 to 1968 there were 265, and since then, virtually every session of Congress has seen its own batch of proposals. Still, the Electoral College simply refuses to die.

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