The Electoral College – Nuts and Bolts
Adapted from http://www.hks.harvard.edu/case/3pt/electoral.html
The actual mechanism of electing the president and the vice president of the United States is a rather complicated process. The electoral college is one of the many compromises written into the United States Constitution in 1787. . . . Providing that the president be chosen indirectly through the “electoral college” rather than directly by the voters in November was one of the founders' defenses against “popular passion” – that is, the masses of people, who they assumed were not capable of making an enlightened decision in this matter.
Under the Constitution, each state is authorized to choose electors for president and vice president, the number always being the same as the combined number of U.S. Senators and Representatives allotted to that state. With 100 Senators and 435 Representatives in the United States, plus three electors for the District of Columbia provided by the Twenty-third Amendment, the total electoral college vote is 538. To be elected to the presidency a candidate must receive an absolute majority
(270) of the electoral votes cast. If no candidate receives a majority, the House of Representatives picks a president, with each state in the House casting only one vote, regardless of its size.
According to the Constitution, the method of choosing electors is left to the states. In the beginning many states did not provide for popular election of the presidential electors; instead, the state legislatures chose the electors. Back then, electors cast their votes for the candidates of their choice, with the majority winner being elected president and the runner-up, vice president. This made for some bizarre situations, as in 1796 when the Federalist Party candidate, John Adams, with 71 votes, became president, and the Democratic-Republican Party candidate, Thomas Jefferson, with 68 votes, became vice president. In 1800 Jefferson and his running mate, Aaron Burr (he was running for vice president) each won an identical number of electoral votes, forcing the election into the House of Representatives, which resolved it in Jefferson's favor. It was to avoid any similar occurrence that the Twelfth Amendment was passed in 1804. This amendment required the electors to cast two separate ballots, one for president and the other for vice president. This is the only constitutional change that has been made in the electoral college system, other than to add three electoral votes for the District of Columbia in 1961.
Today, the function of the electoral college has changed drastically. Nowadays, the people vote in presidential elections on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November every four years. In most of the states it is the names of the presidential and vice presidential candidates rather than the names of the electors that appear on the ballot. When voters in the general election cast a ballot for president and vice president, they are actually voting for a slate – or group – of electors that has been chosen by that party. (These electors are typically party activists who are given the job as a reward for service to their party.) Instead of voting for whomever they please for president and vice president, these electors pledge to support the candidate nominated by their party.
The victor in each state is determined by counting the popular votes for each “ticket” – the president and vice presidential candidates for each party. The ticket receiving the most votes is declared the winner. This means that the states’ delegates to the electoral college will consist of the group of electors chosen by the winning party. Six weeks later, the winning party’s electors cast their official electoral college vote for the presidential and vice presidential candidates representing their party.
In the beginning, the electors had very real powers to vote their will. Now, their sole function is to confirm a decision made by the electorate (the voters) six weeks earlier.
Every four years in November, when the electorate (all the people who vote) cast ballots for their choice for President and Vice President of the United States, they are really voting for electors (members of the Electoral College) who have pledged to vote for a specific set of candidates.
According to the U.S. Constitution, each state is allotted a number of electors that is equal to the number of representatives in the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate for that state. (Note that every state gets a minimum of one House member, no matter how small their population, so every state is allotted at least three electors.)
The total number of electoral votes possible, including the District of Columbia, is 538.
The presidential and vice presidential “ticket” that receives a majority (51% or more) of the electoral college votes become President and Vice President of the United States. A majority is 270 votes.
In December, the electors of each state cast their official votes for President and Vice President.
These votes (the “popular vote”) are tallied in each state and the candidate who wins the most votes in a state receives ALL of that state’s electors. This is called a winner-take- all system because a candidate only needs to win a plurality of the popular vote (that is, one more than any other candidate, not necessarily the majority) in order to earn all of the electors for that state, who pledge to vote for that candidate in the electoral college. The only exceptions currently are Nebraska and Maine, where the electors can be split among the various candidates.
According to the U.S. Constitution, if no candidate wins a clear majority of the electoral votes, the president is chosen by the U.S. House of Representatives from among the three-highest vote-getters. Each state gets ONE vote in the process (Representatives from states with more than one member of the House would have to agree on a single candidate for whom to vote), and a majority is needed to win. The vice president in this case would be chosen by the U.S. Senate. This happened in the elections of 1800 and 1824.
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