Andy Coan & Ned Foley talk

In both 2016 and 2024, large majorities of American voters told pollsters they were dissatisfied with their choices for president — and hungry for an alternative. Yet candidates who might have commanded broad majority support, from Michael Bloomberg to Nikki Haley, never had a realistic path to victory. Why not? And what can be done about it? Join Professor Andrew Coan for a conversation with Professor Edward B. Foley (The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law) about Foley's forthcoming book, "The Real Preference of the Voters": Madison's Ultimate Electoral Insight and Its Relevance for Revitalizing America's Democracy. Drawing on the work of the Marquis de Condorcet, a forgotten insight from James Madison, and two centuries of American electoral history, Foley argues that America's voting system systematically fails to elect the candidate a majority of voters actually prefer — and that the problem is getting worse as partisan polarization accelerates. The conversation will explore the history, the modern law of elections, and the prospects for reform. This event is free and open to the public. About Edward B. Foley Edward B. Foley is a visiting professor at the University of Arizona’s James E. Rogers College of Law and holds the Ebersold Chair in Constitutional Law at The Ohio State University. Over the past two years, he has served as a Crane Fellow in Law and Public Policy at Princeton University and a Guggenheim Fellow in Constitutional Studies. Previously, he served as a contributing opinion columnist for the Washington Post and an NBC News election law analyst for the 2020 election. His books include Presidential Elections and Majority Rule (Oxford University Press, 2020), which excavates the forgotten philosophical premises of the Electoral College and provides a feasible basis for reform, and Ballot Battles: The History of Disputed Elections in the United States (Oxford University Press, 2016), named a Finalist for the David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Legal History and one of 100 "must-read books about law and social justice." Foley served as Reporter for the American Law Institute's Project on Election Administration and co-authored Election Law and Litigation: The Judicial Regulation of Politics (Wolters Kluwer, 2014). His scholarship and op-eds have appeared in the University of Chicago Law Review, the New York Times, the Atlantic, Politico, and Slate, among other publications. Professor Foley clerked for Chief Judge Patricia M. Wald of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Justice Harry Blackmun of the United States Supreme Court. He is a graduate of Columbia University School of Law and Yale College.