Alan Hirsch, author of A Short History of Presidential Elections Crises: (And How to Prevent the Next One), says while there is no election crisis now - Biden's win is definitive - the electoral college is undemocratic and increases the possibilities of fraud, uncertain results, and more post-electi

Alan Hirsch, author of A Short History of Presidential Elections Crises: (And How to Prevent the Next One), says while there is no election crisis now - Biden's win is definitive - the electoral college is undemocratic and increases the possibilities of fraud, uncertain results, and more post-election crises. Hirsch joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news podcast.

Transcript edited for clarity

Paul Jay

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Everyone who follows American elections knows it takes 270 electoral votes to win the presidency. It's not the popular vote that wins; its Electoral-College votes. If it were a direct election, there wouldn't have been a President Trump. The whole system is undemocratic. It was established to allow a kind of steering of election results if the mobs and democracy get out of hand -- that is, out of the hands of the elites. As conservative pundit George Will said a few years ago, elections are for deciding which section of the elites govern, not whether the elite shall govern.

And according to our guest, the Electoral College may also have been introduced to reinforce white supremacy. He says the Electoral College also greatly increases the possibilities of fraud and uncertain results and thus more post-election crises. While Trump is doing whatever he can to create such a crisis, the results of the 2020 election does not seem in doubt. But without the pandemic, it could have been otherwise. And who knows, maybe the Trump shenanigans aren't over yet. To talk about the current situation, the history of election crises, and what should be done about the Electoral College is Alan Hirsch. He's the author of A Short History of Presidential Election Crises: (And How to Prevent the Next One). [Alan is also Instructor in the Humanities and Chair of the Justice and Law Studies program at Williams College.] Thanks for joining us.

Alan Hirsch

My pleasure.

Paul Jay

So, first of all, start with the current situation. Is there, in fact, an election crisis going on with these various lawsuits? Or is it kind of Trump theatrics and in reality, this election is over and there isn't really actually a crisis?

Alan Hirsch

Well, whether there's a crisis or not remains to be seen. But if there is one, it's not an election crisis. The election was actually administered extremely effectively and it produced a clear winner. So, this is not my idea of a[n election] crisis. The president seems determined to manufacture a political crisis, which, worst case, would morph into a constitutional crisis. But again, what I call an election crisis is when after the voting, we don't know who won -- in particular,