With Senate filibusters in the news every day, Jesse Wegman of the New York Times Editorial Board tells how a national popular vote was killed by a filibuster led by Southern segregationists in 1969.
"In the late 1960s, the country was on the verge of dumping the Electoral College and switching to a national popular vote for president....
"The effort got a last-minute boost from the chaotic 1968 election, in which the segregationist third-party candidate George Wallace nearly deadlocked the race and forced it into the House of Representatives....
"In September 1969, the House voted overwhelmingly, 338 to 70, to approve a constitutional amendment abolishing the Electoral College....
"Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana ... had been pushing for a popular vote since 1966, shortly after the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts had ended the Jim Crow era and pulled America closer than it had ever been to a truly representative democracy. Electing the president directly was the next logical step in that progression....
"The amendment was killed off for good by a filibuster led by three Southerners — Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, Sam Ervin of North Carolina and James Eastland of Mississippi ... All three avowed segregationists....
"As the Southerners were well aware, the Electoral College was a xxxxxx of white supremacy. It protected white dominance throughout the South, where Black voters who were no longer disenfranchised by Jim Crow could still be rendered invisible by state winner-take-all laws. Under these laws, the white majority in states like Alabama, South Carolina and Georgia always got its way. If the nation switched to a popular vote, each Black voter in those states would have just as much say as a white voter in electing the president...."
"On Sept. 29, 1970, the Senate voted on whether to end the filibuster and move forward with the amendment. The amendment’s supporters fell five votes short....
