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Listen to Journalist and Author Jesse Wegman Discuss Birch Bayh
09/21/2020
“It's appropriate because in any conversation about the nation’s founders, we must include the name Birch Bayh. He shares with James Madison, the father of the Constitution, the distinction of being the only Americans to have authored more than one successful amendment to that document.”
That’s how Jesse Wegman, journalist, author and editorial board member of The New York Times, characterized the late former U.S. Senator Birch Bayh in his lecture, “A New Engine for a New Age: Birch Bayh, the Electoral College and the Push for a National Popular Vote” during IU McKinney Law’s Birch Bayh Lecture.
The lecture was presented on September 17, in recognition of the nation’s Constitution Day. Due to the pandemic, the virtual event was presented live over Zoom and a recording of the event is available here.
Wegman is the author of a book, Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College, published in March 2020. In his IU McKinney Law lecture, he offered a behind-the-scenes recounting of his discussion on the subject with Bayh, and his admiring portrait of the late Hoosier politician’s life that didn’t make it into the book.
Although he tells the story of how Bayh reintroduced his Electoral College amendment in every session of Congress through the 1970s, until he lost re-election in 1980, Wegman also brings the role of the electoral college into the 21st century—"barely two decades old, and yet it has already been defined by the Electoral College’s anti-majoritarian distortions.
“If Senator Bayh were here, I know he would say this is a crisis for our democracy. It is a crisis for our republic,” Wegman said.
The Birch Bayh Lecture was established at IU McKinney in honor of former U.S. Senator Birch Bayh. The series is made possible through the generous contributions of the Simon Property Group, where Senator Bayh served on the board for 17 years, and the friends of Birch Bayh, focuses on issues of importance to Senator Bayh throughout his long and distinguished career in government.
