Electoral College is a group of representatives that formally elects the president and vice president of the United States. The U.S. presidential election is an indirect election. The voters of each state determine electors who represent them in the Electoral College. The electors, in turn, cast electoral votes on behalf of the states they represent. Electoral votes determine the outcome of the election.
All 50 states and the District of Columbia have a certain number of electoral votes. For each state, the number is equal to the number of senators and representatives the state has in the U.S. Congress. States with larger populations have more representatives, and therefore more electoral votes. The District of Columbia, which has no senators or representatives, has three electoral votes. In nearly every state, the candidate who wins the plurality (highest number) of the popular votes receives all the state’s electoral votes. The exceptions to this rule are Maine and Nebraska, which use the congressional district method. Under this method, each of the state’s congressional districts is assigned an electoral vote, which is given to the candidate who wins a plurality in the district’s popular vote. But Maine and Nebraska each also have two statewide electoral votes, to represent the state’s two senators.
The college in action.
On Election Day, in November, voters choose among presidential and vice presidential candidates from different political parties. The votes do not directly determine which candidate will become president. Instead, they determine which party’s electors will represent each state in the Electoral College. In some states, the ballots list the presidential and vice presidential candidates, not the proposed electors. For this reason, many voters do not realize they do not vote directly for the president and vice president.
In December following the election, the electors in each state assemble and cast their ballots. Either by custom or by law, the electors vote for the candidates designated by their party. In rare cases, a state’s electoral votes may be split. A split occurs when an elector chooses not to vote for the party’s candidates. Such an elector—sometimes called a faithless elector—may, in some states, be punished by law.
After the electoral votes are cast, they are sent to the vice president of the United States, acting as president of the Senate, and to the head of the General Services Administration in Washington, D.C. In January, at a joint session of Congress, the vice president opens and tallies the votes. One Democrat and one Republican from each chamber count the votes. The candidate who gets a majority of the electoral votes is declared elected. If no candidate has a majority, the state delegations in the House of Representatives choose the president from the three candidates with the highest number of electoral votes. In such an election, each state has one vote, determined by a majority vote among that state’s delegation. If the vote is tied, the state is counted as abstaining.
History.
The manner of electing the president was a major issue at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. The convention rejected the proposal that Congress elect the chief executive, on the grounds that the president would then be under the control of the legislature. The convention also rejected the proposal that the people elect the president directly. Eventually, the convention agreed on a method of indirect popular election, which became the Electoral College.
The Constitution established that each state legislature could decide how that state’s electors are chosen. At first, most states allowed their legislatures to choose the electors. But after 1800, more and more states began choosing electors in popular elections. Today, all states and the District of Columbia use this method.
From 1789 to 1801, each elector voted for two presidential candidates on the same ballot. The person with the most votes became president, and the runner-up became vice president. But in the election of 1800, two candidates, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, received the same number of electoral votes. The election went to the House of Representatives, where each state had one vote. Jefferson was elected president, and Burr became vice president. That election led to Amendment 12 to the Constitution, ratified in 1804, providing that electors should designate their votes for president and vice president on separate ballots.
The House had to settle another presidential election in 1824. Andrew Jackson received more electoral votes than any of the other candidates, but he failed to win a majority. John Quincy Adams was the runner-up. In the House, Henry Clay, another candidate, threw his support to Adams. As a result, Adams became president, even though Jackson had a larger share of the popular vote. Clay became Adams’s secretary of state in 1825.
The growth of powerful political parties has greatly influenced the role of the Electoral College. Electors today pledge to vote for the candidates from their political party, even if they do not always agree that the party’s candidates are the best qualified. Because this pledge is rarely broken, the outcome of a presidential election is usually known after the electors are determined on Election Day. As a result, the Electoral College vote has become largely a ceremonial procedure.
Some people argue that the Electoral College should be replaced with direct election of the president. They point out that the college has elected four presidents whose opponents received more popular votes: Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, Benjamin Harrison in 1888, George W. Bush in 2000, and Donald J. Trump in 2016. Some people also argue that direct election might encourage third and fourth parties, and thus increase voter choice and voter turnout. During the 2000’s, a number of states considered a proposal that would award all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who won the national popular vote, in effect bypassing the Electoral College. The proposal would become law only if states that totaled at least 270 electoral votes passed it.
Other people believe the Electoral College system should be preserved. They argue that the direct election of the president would reduce the importance of individual states, particularly those with smaller populations. Without the Electoral College, candidates might be more likely to concentrate on highly populated states and ignore other parts of the country.
