and click on the impeachment inquiry box at the top of the homepage. c-span's campaign 2020 has live coverage of upcoming campaign events. deval patrickan2, will speak at the politics and eggs breakfast in new hampshire. on c-span, president trump holds a campaign rally in florida. his first since changing residency from new york to florida in october. live coverage on c-span and c-span2. watch online at c-span.org or listen with the free c-span radio app. next, laura brown talks about how the fall -- founding fathers elected a new leader for the country and how it evolved into the current

nominating process. then bernie sanders holds a rally in new hampshire, parthams campaign is calling a worker appreciation tour. ♪ [cheering] >> thank you for coming. >> fortunes above $50 million. you may get that big, pitch in two cents so everyone else has

a chance to make it. >> we are doing the policy releases. people here want to get to know you, what you are about. >> as his vice president, it is dd hisat honor toa name to the primary ballot today because we need america to give us four more years. applause]d ♪ >> dr. lara brown, that is a glimpse of the 2020 primary process. a process that attracted more than 20 democrats. last time around, 17 gop

candidates vying for the nomination. you have spent your academic career trying to understand and explain the electoral process. when you try to explain where we are today to people and how this process works, how do you explain it? dr. brown: the thing you have to start with first is that competitiveness drives a lot of candidates. one of the things that is so interesting, when we really understand why there are so many candidates in the democratic primary field, why there are so many republicans in the 2016 field, it was because the presidency was seen as being up for grabs in both instances. seat.6 it was an open there was disbelief that the republican could win that seat from the democrats. so many republicans jumped in. when we look at 2020, you see president trump is something of an and battled incumbent.

that also sparks candidates in the opposition party to jump in and via for the presidency. we know about the kind of people who threw their hats into the ring these kinds of -- these days? dr. brown: since 1976, our candidates have had more and more individuals who have claimed they are outsiders. first, they began as these outside washington politicians. governors like jimmy carter, ronald reagan, and bill clinton. now what we have seen in the last few cycles are individuals like president trump saying, i'm not even from the political system at all. if you look at candidate tom , he's running on the same line of donald trump.

that he is a washington outsider and a businessman who can save the system, despite having no political experience before joining. >> we thought we would spend this hour with you learning how we got where we are today by really going through history. the major points in the process where the electoral system has changed. we have to go back to the beginning. you have written about, starting in the continental convention and the debate amongst our founding fathers about the selection process. the phrase circular debate. what is important to know about what they were trying to achieve? and what came out of it? dr. brown: when we look back, we have to realize our framers were trying to do something that was not done around the world. they were trying to figure out how to elect an executive for the country. that was not something that was done all around the world.

there were hereditary monarchs in power. as they looked out, they looked to governors of state and they tried to invent their own system. should the congress elect the president? they said no, if they do that, the president will be the creature of congress, meaning that congress will own the presidency. then they said, should there be a direct popular election? they said no, that would likely result in sort of any sort of consensus. they're going to be too much chaos. they came upon a notion of the electoral college. what this basically was was a way to say, let us get leaders from each state to go to their meeting,itals, have a

and for the specific purpose, put forward names, vote on, if you will, two different people who could potentially be president and send them up to congress to determine who was actually the winner. that is really how it started. ,t started with this idea of let us get some local leaders to help create some nominees. >> of course, in the past couple decades, the debate has been raging about whether the electoral college still works for a country of this size, complexity. can you give us the pro's and the cons? dr. brown: the biggest thing in its favor is that it does have a tendency to force presidential candidate to campaign broadly in different states narrowly.

it is more important to win a lot of states by 51% then a couple of states by 60%. what that does is ensures the president, in fact, represents most of the states in addition to most of the people. the electoral college really does do what the framers had hoped, which was that it would be an office, the presidency itself, that represented the people through their states. the combination of the house and the senate. the biggest problem with it is actually a problem the parties created themselves, and in fact is not related to the electoral college. staterelated to how each -- it's electoral votes. all states but maine and nebraska allocate those in a winner take all manner. win allin by 51%, you of that states electors.

a much more fair way would be for there to be essentially proportional representation by the awarding of those electors. if one candidate won 51%, they get 51% of the electors. if the other candidate who lost estate would still get 45% of the electors. that would do a better job of more approximating the overall national popular vote. >> is that debate going on in any state legislators today? dr. brown: sort of. but we actually have is a lot of different reform efforts that are attempting to overturn how the electoral college works. mostly there is a national popular vote reform that really argues what should happen is whoever wins the national popular vote, that state's electoral votes should go to

that candidate. i will tell you i think that is a horrible idea and it is a horrible idea not because it seems unfair, but in fact because in practicality i think it would cause even more angst than the system we have now. i cannot envision a scenario where a republican won the national popular vote and everyone in california would say, yes, isn't it great? all of our electors should go to the republican candidate as well. that is not something i imagine californians would be pleased, to see all 55 electoral votes going to a republican candidate that they clearly did not vote for in the popular vote level. history,back to early george washington by acclamation in two elections, but it became

clear the system was not functioning. what happened? dr. brown: what is so fascinating is that this system almost immediately fell apart. the framers had this solution that the electoral college either would find a consensus candidate that everyone loved, like george washington, or that there would essentially be a split decision. every state would put forward a favorite son. no one would have enough electoral ballast to get a majority, and as a result, the decision stayed among the top five according to the original constitution would go to the house of representatives. then the house would divide into state delegations and vote for president. thatreally happened was parties formed the four --

before the 1796 running of the presidency. they formed for a couple reasons. political science talks about the need for what we call coalition in the legislature. basically government would not be able to operate without parties. what we mean by that is, imagine every piece of legislation. you had to form a brand-new coalition every single time. it just would not form or function. operate is what political scientists call long coalitions. there are groups of people with interests that are generally aligned. they agree to support each other and band together. with that, you are able to address more issues more quickly and efficiently than you would otherwise. these parties really formed in during790's because

washington's administration, there were issues that started to divide people very quickly. you saw the debt assumption wherea bill that -- basically washington dc and the federal government would all the debts from the revolutionary war. that created some angst among southerners who did not want to see a powerful federal government. early on there started to be this division between a party that looks at a strong federal government with international a plants and essentially to improve the nation versus a party that is more interested in state and local power, a federal government, and a more inward looking foreign policy. that separated pretty much right away around the 1794, 1793

timeframe. >> when did the first crisis occur? dr. brown: the very first competitive election. in 1796 we have a situation where john adams is essentially the federalist nominee and thomas jefferson is the democratic nominee at the time, his party was called the democratic republicans. were competing against each other. they each had different favored vice presidential candidates, but when the balloting happened and every state voted for two adams, it turned out john came in first and thomas jefferson came in second. all of a sudden, you have opposition partisan serving as president and vice president in the same administration.

that clued in everyone there was going to be some problems. the next election, 1800, was essentially a rematch, but now john adams is the incumbent president. thomas jefferson is working with james madison, speaker of the party.in the opposition in that running of the election, thomas jefferson is now more popular than the incumbent president, running as this outsider against those in washington, so to speak. you end up having thomas jefferson tying the electoral college with his own vice presidential pick, ehrenberg. -- aaron burr. at the time, there was no official casting of ballots for president and vice president as separate ballots by the electors. andn burr stayed silent thought, maybe i can actually be

made the president in the house of representatives if i just go along. maybe i will be able to squeak out the presidency. that created, obviously, a massive division in washington over who should become president. on the 36 the ballot in the house of representatives, thomas jefferson was made the president of the united states. >> clearly six was needed. was to amend the constitution, which what it did was force the electors to cast separate ballots. one for president, one for vice president, and be clear in that. it reduced the overall number of individuals who basically if there were a tie or no one received a majority, would go to

the house of representatives. it would do five to three. >> the next election everyone studied in high school was the 1824 election. adams, clay, johnson. what is important to know about that? dr. brown: there's a couple things that are really important to know. not until james monroe's presidency, this idea of how does the nominee get decided? it really was not a controversy. everyone understood john adams would be the successor to washington. everyone understood james madison would be the successor to thomas jefferson. the problem was now you had james monroe, who had been governor in virginia. he had been secretary of state under james madison. he again becomes president. a lot of other people are

starting to say, wait a minute. how come the virginians are consistently getting nominated for this office and winning? s presidencymunroe' is winding down, it is 1824 and competition has been brewing for years. people cannot wait to jump in. they have a lot of candidates and one of those was actually william crawford, who had been secretary of the treasury, if i recall, and crawford gets what's called the king caucus endorsement. the caucus was essentially a meeting of each party's congressional delegation to determine who should be the nominee. it is kind of derogatorily referred to that way because people from outside washington were saying, wait a minute.

congressional members get to elect the chief? we are in a democratic country. the fix this sense that is in. crawford gets this nomination, which might not have been so bad but for the fact that he had a very debilitating stroke and he was partially blind and mostly paralyzed. yet he still wins the caucus endorsement. the idea that all of a sudden, the presidency is going to somebody who was basically unable to fulfill the duties of of office raised the hackles many other individuals, including andrew jackson, the war hero from the war of 1812 and his battle of new orleans fame, who basically is looking at this as, he is the outsider. he wants to run.

then there is john quincy adams, john' son who was now the senator from massachusetts. he is interested. and henry clay, speaker of the house. all of them jump in. all of them start contesting the king caucus endorsement by trying to get basically resolutions from their states and their state legislatures, saying isn't this great? we love our person. this should be the president. againectoral college essentially runs into a problem because the ballots are split. what we have is a situation where no one earns a majority of the votes and because it is now the top three, that means it is

between john quincy adams, andrew jackson, and william crawford. and henry clay, who is speaker of the house, gets to essentially decide. the former candidate who gets ousted, because of the 12 amendment, gets to help make the decision. he makes it in favor of john quincy adams. that becomes the basis of andrew jackson and his supporters cry of a corrupt bargain. the whole system again turns into controversy by 1828. in 1828on is successful and is the president that our current incumbent points to as his favorite in history. how did the election of andrew jackson change the system again? dr. brown: it certainly changed in that andrew jackson was from tennessee, he was this war hero, he had a certain celebrity in

the country. he also wanted to represent the common man. interestingly enough, in 1828, he basically picked up william crawford's campaign manager, who had been martin van buren, who later becomes president. but martin van buren helps andrew jackson to expand the basis of the parties. the parties become these mass organizations. by 1832, andrew jackson and martin van buren had decided to adopt an innovation called the national convention, which was a way to bring all the state party leaders to one convention to choose the nominees instead of using this either state or alative resolution congressional caucus or king

caucus. >> what was happening in the electorate? who could vote? dr. brown: generally speaking, what was going on was that white males were now enfranchised. they reduce the property requirements that were in existence early in the republic. it was also true that the states had essentially moved to the system of winner take all in most of the electoral vote allocation. it was also true that states were no longer essentially choosing electors by the state legislature, determining who the votes, relying on of the people in their states. >> the national conventions, which start in 1830, there were three distinct periods in history of national conventions.

the national party leadership, best example five by abraham lincoln's election. what was the story? dr. brown: it takes some time to state party leaders actually build up enough credibility to become delegates at their convention. to james pulled -- james nomination, or abraham lincoln's. a lot of people who are delegates, managing these candidacies, are the ones ensuring the vote for these individuals, they are in some ways more national party leaders than they are state party leaders. they are still senators, still representatives. they are sometimes governors, but more often than not, they are still people who had power in washington or had powerful

networks nationally. james capel -- james k. polk would never have been the nominee had it not been for andrew johnson's mentorship and his maneuvering martin van buren away from the nomination that year. >> how did abraham lincoln with a brand-new party, the republican party was a few years old, how did he maneuver through that system? dr. brown: this is the interesting part. in these early years, so much was about creating a deadlock. if you created a deadlock in these conventions, what you could create through kind of the stage managing of different activities, putting the name into nomination or uproariousgeneral

noise when that person's name was called, you could essentially stage-managed this notion there was momentum behind an acceptable candidate. the individuals we think of as dark horses who came out of nowhere, they did not really come out of nowhere. they were people who were working within the convention to make sure that if deadlock happened, if more than one ballot occurred, they would answer there -- enter their candidacy and work to essentially gin up a majority. it was the quintessential kind of back room of politics that we think about. >> when was the first time presidential candidates started going to their own conventions? dr. brown: they don't start going until fdr. the big moment where he is there

in 1932, he flies into the convention. it is a very big deal. ofre are earlier instances individuals showing up at the conventions, but it was not normal, which is one of those amusing things. if you are going to be the candidate, you had to manage to become the nominee without being there. that is quite a trick, to have your supporters and friends put nomination that whole process through. the party bosses became so important. we have this whole area where cities were growing, we were moving from an agrarian society to an industrial society. we had basically these party bosses who were running the political votes of their cities or their countries and the

candidates were essentially going to them and eventually begging their support. if the candidates pass muster, the bosses would maneuver on their behalf at the convention. it is interesting because by the time of william mckinley in 1896, the reformers had taken hold. they were disgusted by this corruption and dealing. and in fact turned around mckinley tries to run a plan against the bosses. what he does is, as a republican, garners the vote from southern delegates who have not yet been important because during that period of time, the south was solidly democratic in the general election and nobody had thought to include those delegates in the nomination process. time,ing that period of

swing states became really important. assume, new york and pennsylvania. the third was indiana. why was indiana so powerful? dr. brown: indiana was going back and forth. you had a very strong country party, meaning that everybody in rural areas were in support of the democratic candidates. those who were in the towns were republicans because the parties had switched coalitions. what we usually think of now, the republicans in rural areas and democrats in urban, at that point it was a different mix. it was as competitive. to, really just comes down there was a kind of divided population. an equally balanced population.

when a state is that way, it becomes a battleground state in the general election. that matters at every level. ,> during that time period there were two of those contested elections. 1876 and 1888. benjamin harrison lost the popular vote, but won the electoral college. if the party bosses were in control, why do we end up with two elections so close? dr. brown: the same reason we ended up with elections in 2016 that were close. speaking, -- does very well when the country is that 50-50. it is difficult to decide an election when the boat is split relatively equally. between a percentage point.

the electoral college tends to magnify because of this winner take all allocation, the votes of those states that the winter winds -- the winner wins. the electoral college -- and that is one of the things in favor of it. 1992, bill clinton only won 43% of the popular vote. he won a much larger electoral college vote, which allowed them to govern. we.s interesting . have these inversions in the gilded age. we had 90% turnout regularly. we also had an equally divided country. it was literally a percentage point between the candidates

that would determine the election. at that moment, the electoral college does not work well. you have to have another decision. 1876, it did not even go to the house of representatives. it went to a specially designed commission where we had basically republicans and democrats review the different contested states' electoral ballots. there was one more republican on it then democrat. on every single vote republican voted republican. hayesesult, rutherford b won even though the popular vote suggests tilden may well have. hayesifficult time for establishing his legitimacy.

in history, presidents have not won the popular vote -- how fickle does it for presidents to establish themselves in a contested environment? dr. brown: very hard. there is a sense the system is not working. what is interesting about it is that we read into the popular vote something we probably shouldn't. that is that it is the true measure of the nations will. the aggregated popular vote is something of an accident. what i mean by that is that the candidates do not make their strategies around the popular vote. they build their strategies around electoral college vote. that means campaigning only happens in certain states and not others. that means turnout varies wildly across the states. in a state where people feel as though there vote does not

vote thatat popular comes out of the state may not -- inhe same kind of states that are vying for every ballot. we have to realize the aggregated popular vote just does not contain the kind of meaning i think we would like it to have. the best way i always say and i think most political scientists say to think about the electoral college is it is more like the world series than the super bowl. it does not matter how many runs you have in each game. you have to win four games. nationals washington this last year. down in many runs houston. then they came home to washington dc.

it looked as though they might lose the series if they did not win another game. when you aggregate the runs across all seven games, does the theer -- the person who has most runs, should they win? no. the electoral college says essentially it is the most states. >> thanks to the washington nationals. we are now in the age of moving images. we are going to show one from 1912. an important year because the incumbent president, taft, was challenged by theodore roosevelt. what happened to the process when theodore roosevelt ended up challenging his own president in that year? he ended up running as a third-party candidate. what happened to the process? dr. brown: what was so fascinating about 1912 is you have a former president saying i

want to run again and i think my party should let me run again, and the party says, no. we are going to go with the current president, taft. roosevelt mounts this run really because he does not win his party's nomination. in doing so, he divides the party and as a result, woodrow wilson ends up winning the election. that party, the republican party, really does divide in such a way that it is not able to reform in any sort of dominant way for years. republicanshat the come back after woodrow wilson's presidency for that decade, but then what we see is that franklin roosevelt is able to pick up that coalition and run with it.

the democrats are ensconced for many years. level, and what was important about that period, was that people were questioning party bosses. the progressives who really got going in the late 1890's and toried through all the way franklin roosevelt's presidency had really been about changing the nature of who were the delegates at these national conventions? they said it is not fair that it is these party bosses or national elites. people should decide. need to have a way to decide. the primarywas that election was created as a way to select delegates to the convention.

>> what was the first state to hold a primary? dr. brown: florida is the first to adopt a primary ballot. wisconsin really takes it forward because the governor pushes forward on having primaries in 1905. >> what are the important periods for the evolution of the electoral process? dr. brown: the most important thing to realize is these first primaries were what we generally call beauty contests. they were not necessarily aligned with the delegate in the vote. primary, vote in your but that did not necessarily bind anyone in your state to a certain delegate or a delegate to the convention. as a result, the primaries for most of the 1900s become just a

way that a candidate can demonstrate their electability. this is why everyone points to a john f. kennedy running in the west virginia primary because what he was saying to his party is, look. i am catholic and i can still do well in a very protestant state. .e runs, he does well the democratic party says, yes, he is electable. system of beauty contests and national elites managing the delegates reaches another crisis and comes to a head. that have a video of convention, which anyone who was alive will remember. just a quick question because we are going to see it on television. in the 1950's, television

arrived. after that, madison avenue. how did those additions to our culture impact the presidential selection process? dr. brown: it just starts to change the notion of who is an acceptable candidate. as should people look to somebody who can lead? this is where republicans selecting eisenhower's happening. this is a throwback all the way to andrew jackson or to any of , whother generals, grant won in different points in our history. that the this sense only way the republicans could win against the democratic bring a wars to hero onto the ticket and create a coalition behind him. actually nominee had

managed the kind of delegate vote getting for eisenhower, and it is really because of his warren that in fact ended up on the supreme court. warren was interested in the nomination. dooley convinced him to get his votes to eisenhower. eisenhower reports -- appoints warren. the war in court's history which whichren court's history would not have occurred if not for those political maneuvers. her member, the nation is in the middle of the vietnam war. let's look at what was happening at the podium at the democratic convention. >> i proudly accept the nomination of our party. applause]d

>> we have heard hard and sometimes bitter debate, but i submit that this is the debate and this is the work of a free people. the work of an open convention and a political party responsive to the needs of this nation. >> why was 1968 a crisis? dr. brown: because it was not really an open convention. hadident lyndon johnson worked very hard in the background after he had stepped down from running to manage those delegates and ensure his vice president, hubert humphrey, would garner the nomination. those individuals running in the

primaries and those antiwar candidates in particular, mccarthy and mcgovern, their supporters were enraged that they did not have a way to be important on the floor, to have any votes. they could not believe to secure was going the democratic nomination. with that, there were protests and riots in chicago that became very violent. the democrats basically said, ok. you want a way out of this -- the only way to get out of this is to reform the process. they established what became the governor frazier reform. the most important part of the reforms was that the delegates selected named and

prior to the primary in those states. what we saw was that the primaries were being bound and linked to the delegate selection process. as a delegate, you are bound to vote for the candidate you are elected for. dr. brown: yes. it is still an interesting thing parties tinker with delegate selection processes. different states are awarded different numbers of delegates. the democrats also insured in their reforms that there was a broader diversity of delegates. they did put affirmative action, put quotas. , theemocratic party delegates have to be divided evenly in terms of women and men. representativea sample essentially of minorities

. if there's 40% of the population in the state are minorities, that delegation better have 40% of itslose to delegates going to the convention be minorities. >> political junkies and reporters would love the idea of a brokered convention. this was the deathknell of a brokered convention. dr. brown: what it meant was what you accrued, you knew you would get a vote on the first ballot. >> that shifts the process to the primaries. dr. brown: it does. >> wended iowa and new hampshire become so important? makes its iowa really mark with jimmy carter in 1976. in 1976.to the process there was a large number of democrats who were running. richard nixon had stepped down

after watergate. gerald ford had taken over. he was not a popular president. there was a lot of competition. the people running were washington senators who were saying, look, we are here, we are going to clean out the corruption. we were part of essentially republicans who not so greatin things for the country. iowa carter comes in from -- i mean, from georgia, and he placesn after i will he second. like clinton's second place in 92, it rocketed his momentum upward and he careened right through the primaries and won

the nomination, which surprised a lot of delegates. the democrats on the heels of that decided they needed to tinker with their process. that was when the added superdelegates. other thing that happened in 1976 was the resurgence of nationally televised debates. 1960one learned about the jfk nexen debates, but they went on hiatus. what impact did they have on the electoral process? debates are interesting because there's a lot of studies that show the debates are not in fact what decides the election. it is in fact the discussion about who won the debate that becomes more important. one of the things that is true is that the debates did create more of a sense that having a television present, being able to connect with voters through

the television camera, was in fact going to be more important than the process of going out and shaking hands in different states. the debates have had really mixed effects. they have this situation now where generally speaking, our primaries and our process is so much more something that approximates a reality show then it is necessarily the candidates getting to know the voters, the voters getting to know the positions, and the voters choosing the candidates who are best for their party. >> i want to get to where we are today. briefly i would like to hear about you so people know. you have been an academic studying this process all your life. what sparked your interest? dr. brown: i have had a lot of

iterations of my life. i did start off in college in the late 80's and early 90's watching the fall of the wall, the berlin wall of course, the end of the cold war, and the beginning of bill clinton's presidency. i was in california during the riots that happened, drink the o.j. simpson trial. in theas a lot going on early 1990's, which made a lot of us in california say, wow, california is important and we should engage. -- politics are important and we should engage. i spent the 1990's engaged in democrat politics. in billup serving clinton's administration at the department of education.

i worked as a corporate liaison. i returned to academia in the early 2000 and have been there ever since. i am fascinated by politics mostly because i have seen it at every angle. i have seen it as a partisan, i have seen as a government appointee, i have seen it as an academic. i have even seen it from the position of the business community. i also worked in business as a consultant and did a lot of things for different corporations. >> you also married someone involved -- your wikipedia page says someone known to the c-span audience, major garrett. what are the dinner conversations like? major is really a phenomenal journalist. thisd i always have

tension in one of our conversations. i, as an epidemic -- academic am always fear rising. heorizing.opped -- t is can i test? he always responds by saying, this is what we know now. journalists report what is happening and are not interested or focused on long-term consequences. they are in the middle of the first draft of history. as a political scientist, i am always trying to understand history and what it means for the future. >> your graduate school turns out a lot of people who become campaign managers, etc.. when did they become important to the process? dr. brown: right about the time mcgovernntially the

fraser reforms common -- come in. as television is taking off, as managed campaigns become important, but also the parties lost power. we have to understand that consultants became away for ofre to be a continuation political knowledge and experience that used to reside within the party. now it resides within the consultants. when the parties lost their power, the consultant took over. that is good and bad. it is true when we look at someone like david axelrod, karl extraordinaryw political history and they have

experience. the problem is a lot of the candidates they are managing and putting forward have very little knowledge of politics and how governance actually works. wheree this problem now candidates keep saying they going to outsource politics to the people who know things, but againsty are running all of the people who do know things. >> the process today also costs millions of dollars. hiring staff, the media, the places. when did money become a factor? dr. brown: all of these things rise together. losely because the parties their force. a colleague of mine talks a lot about week parties and strong partisanship. that is the era in which we are.

the parties don't have that much control. the candidates have more control so long as they can raise the money. and yet the candidates don't really have the political knowledge to advance their positions, and that is where the consultants coming -- come in. >> there is a debate that continues about iowa and new hampshire and their representation of the electorate overall. there is a discussion about a national primary or compressed regional primaries. we talked about the electoral college. are any of these fixes once that would have a substantive and positive impact on the primary and elections that we have? primaryn: the national would only make a lot of the things we see right now worse. the cost of elections would skyrocket. only people with very broad name recognition or celebrity would

win. in national primary is probably one of the worst reforms we could implement. i would we were doing it in a rational way have a rotating regional primaries so that different elections have different groups of states go together, which would allow focused retail campaigning. the situation we have right now is really that iowa and new hampshire were grandfathered in and became important, and now there is no way to move them out of the process. nevada and south carolina have been added to the mix of early states. you can see that often they are not necessarily as decisive as you might think. youbasic problem is that are talking about a trade-off between money and voters.

if you really want the voters to get to know the candidates, you need to have fewer states. if you really want everybody to have a fair shot at electing the candidate, then you need to have those candidates have a lot of money. neither system is really fair. >> we are going to close. the last 16 years we have had contested elections. the last one was -- in the electoral college, not the popular vote. the historic moment in the house of representatives in 2000 when one of the aspirants pronounced the results for his opponents. let's watch. >> the state of the votes for president of the united states as delivered to the president of the senate is as follows. the number of electors appointed of which a538,

majority is 270. george w. bush of the state of texas has received for president of the united states 271 votes. al gore of the state of tennessee has received 266 votes. this announcement of the state of the vote by the presidents of the person elected in vice president each for the term beginning on the 20th day of january 2001 and shall be entered together with a list of the votes on the journals of the senate and the house of representatives. may god bless our new president and our new vice president and may god bless the united states of america. [applause] >> we have about a minute left. we start off talking about the founding fathers and how they created the system. what does that moment say about the american system? dr. brown: that is an

extraordinary moment. you have an active statesmanship. an individual who was running for election who decided not to create a constitutional crisis by essentially ignoring the supreme court decision. he could have recognized the florida representatives positioning -- petitioning to be heard and to throw out laura's balance. ballots.a's he did not. it is so important to realize that really critical junctures in our country's history, statesmanship has been all but has kept us going. bruce ackerman writes an extraordinary book about precisely that failure of the founding fathers around making the vice president the president of the senate who would announce that ballot.

>> thank you for your time. dr. brown: thank you for having me. ♪ programs are available at c-span.org. >> next sunday on "q&a" we talk with a founding editor of usa today and vice president of content and development for the .ewsy him -- newseum she talks about tension between the president and the press. at 8:00sunday night eastern on c-span's "q&a."

>> washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. monday morning, a discussion of farm bankruptcies with the american farm bureau executive vice president. then we will talk about campaign 2020 and impeachment with a contributing writer for the nation. tax we will discuss gop cuts with americans for tax reform president norquist. be sure to watch "washington journal" monday morning. join the discussion. arehington journal" mugs available at c-span's new store. see all of the c-span products. >> next, presidential candidate bernie are available at c-span's new sandei