John Feerick was mentioned in The Atlantic regarding electoral college reform.
John Feerick, a professor and former dean at Fordham Law School who advised the American Bar Association during the Bayh hearings and testified before the Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments, noted that even in the early 1820s, the Framers’ intent was largely understood to be kaput. Political parties undermined the conception of the Electoral College as a deliberative body, resulting first in Adams’s win in 1824 in the House and later in increasing use of the Electoral College as an occasionally disruptive middleman between the electorate and the presidency.
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Feerick, writing in 1968, argued for abolishing the Electoral College outright, noting that “if the popular-vote winner were to lose a presidential election … resentment, unrest, public clamor for reform and an atmosphere of crisis would probably ensue.” That point may be coming on fast. Two of the past five presidential-election results have seen reversals of the popular vote—and a third nearly joined them, with about 100,000 votes in Ohio taking the day for Bush in 2004.
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