The founders of this country had to make a big compromise when it came to devising a system to elect the president. Their compromise called for the creation, every four years, of a temporary group of electors equal to the total number of representatives in Congress.
First off…what is the Electoral College?
Established in Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, the Electoral College is the formal body which elects the President and Vice President of the United States.
But wait…don’t the citizens of the US elect the president?
Well, yes, but not directly.
When people vote for president they are really voting for an Elector from their state. They’re the ones who cast the votes that decide the election.
Each state has as many Electors in the Electoral College as it has Representatives in the House, and Senators in Congress. The District of Columbia has three.
That’s a total of 538 Electors. Each one casts a vote, and those votes are tallied to get the results of an election.
A presidential nominee only needs half plus one – 270 electoral votes – to win.
So, do electors have to vote a certain way?
It depends on the state.
In 29 states there are laws requiring that electors vote the same as the people who voted for them.
Most of the time they vote as expected, but in rare cases have changed their vote and voted for a different candidate than the people who voted for them.
A “faithless elector” is someone who casts their electoral vote for someone other than the candidate they pledged to elect. It’s happened 157 times in US history.
The most popular question about the Electoral College is:
Why is this how we vote?
When the US was founded in the late 18th Century, a national presidential campaign like we know today was virtually impossible. The country was just too big, and also…no computers or cell phones. Accurately figuring out the popular vote would have been a monumental undertaking.
But complicating matters was distrust of executive power – specifically, in giving Congress sole power to decide who becomes president. After all, the nation had just fought its way out from under British colonial rule. They didn’t want another tyrant on their hands.
So the Electoral College was a compromise between both of these points of view, and it’s been our system ever since because it’s in the Constitution.
And thereafter, a divide has existed about which results should ultimately determine the outcome of an election.
There are two types of voting results: THE POPULAR VOTE and THE ELECTORAL VOTE
The Popular Vote is the total number of votes cast for a candidate by voters in all 50 states.
The Electoral Vote is what it sounds like: the votes cast for a candidate by each state’s Electors.
Those who support the Electoral College say:
- The current process protects state’s rights. The US is, after all, a republic of states, and each one should be able to apportion its electorates as it sees fit
- And, the Electoral College keeps high population states and regions from deciding the presidency. Without the Electoral College, a huge popular margin in one state (like California or Texas) could decide an entire election.
Those who would prefer elections be determined by the popular vote say:
- It’s possible that the winner may not receive the most popular votes. This has happened five times.
- Also, that under the Electoral system, some votes count more than others. For instance, in 2012 there were less than 200,000 people per electoral vote in Wyoming, but more than 700,000 people per electoral vote in Texas.
- And finally, that the Electoral system causes presidential campaigns to focus on swing states, such as Florida and Ohio, and largely ignore the others (who, in some cases, make up a majority country’s population)
The Electoral College system has actually been changed three times, via the 12th, 20th, and 23rd Amendments. It would take another to do away with the system altogether.
Keep Learning About the Electoral College
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