Understanding the Electoral College: How the US President is Elected

The Electoral College is a cornerstone of the American presidential election system, yet it remains a topic of much discussion and debate. This article aims to provide a comprehensive explanation of the Electoral College, addressing common questions and clarifying its role in determining the next President and Vice President of the United States.

What is the Electoral College?

The Electoral College is a group of people, known as electors, from each state who formally elect the president and vice president of the United States. The U.S. Constitution specifies that state electors - not everyday citizens registered to vote - elect the president and vice president. It’s those presidential electors registered voters choose on Election Day. Americans have never voted directly for president.

The Electoral College is a blend of democracy and federalism. The system ensures that all states, including those with smaller populations, have a voice in the election of the President.

How Does the Electoral College Work?

Apportionment of Electors

Each state is allocated a number of electors equal to its total number of representatives in Congress (House of Representatives plus Senate). Electoral votes are distributed amongst states based on the amount of seats in Congress the state has and this number is partially determined by state populations. The national census, taken every 10 years, determines each state’s number of representatives in the House of Representatives - as well as each state’s number of electors who vote for president.

For example, California, being the most populous state, has the most electors (55), while a handful of sparsely populated states like Wyoming, Alaska, and North Dakota (and Washington D.C.) have the minimum of three. This means that there are 538 electors in total.

Nomination of Electors

The Constitution doesn’t say how state legislatures should nominate electors, and each state determines how it does so. The Constitution specifies that state electors elect the president and vice president. In modern presidential elections, political parties in each state nominate electors through a variety of formal and informal processes during the spring and summer of an election year.

The way it works oftentimes is that the major party organizations within a state - Republican and Democratic - nominate a slate of electors prior to Election Day and send those names to the secretary of state’s office. A state’s office of the secretary of state is the usual place to turn for names and contact information for presidential electors.

The Popular Vote and Electors

On Election Day in November, citizens cast their votes, which determine the popular vote. Whichever candidate wins a state’s popular vote, it’s their party’s slate of electors who get to then vote for president. When voters make their choice for president on Election Day, they’re really voting for the slate of electors put forward by the political party their candidate belongs to.

Thirty-two states require that their electoral votes go to the candidate who wins the statewide popular vote. Electors who snub the popular preference face fines or criminal charges in a few states. Electors typically vote for president at their state capitol roughly a month after Election Day.

Exceptions to the Winner-Take-All Rule

Maine and Nebraska are exceptions to the winner-take-all-electors rule. Those states have what’s called a “district system.” Two electoral votes go to the statewide popular vote winner. Then there’s one electoral vote for each congressional district, appointed based on the vote winner within the district. There are three congressional districts in Nebraska and two in Maine. In Maine and Nebraska, the small circled numbers indicate where an EC seat was filled in a way contrary to the plurality of votes state-wide.

Achieving a Majority

The candidate who receives a majority of electoral votes - 270 out of 538 - wins the presidency.

What Happens if No Candidate Achieves a Majority?

Should a majority of votes not be cast for a candidate, a contingent election takes place: the House holds a presidential election session, where one vote is cast by each of the fifty states.

Key Dates in the Electoral College Process

Several key dates dictate the timeline of the Electoral College process:

Nov. 3: Election Day.
Dec. 8: The last day for states to resolve disputes over vote totals. If state disputes aren’t resolved, Congress decides which slate of nominated electors gets to vote for president.
Dec. 14: Electors meet in their respective states and cast separate votes for president and vice president.
Jan. 6: Congress convenes to count the votes cast by presidential electors. The vice president opens the results by state in alphabetical order. There are procedures for deliberation and objection.
Jan. 20: The four-year terms of the incumbent president and vice president end at noon. The president-elect and vice president-elect are sworn in.

Historical Context and Purpose

The Electoral College was officially selected as the means of electing president towards the end of the Constitutional Convention, due to pressure from slave states wanting to increase their voting power, since they could count slaves as 3/5 of a person when allocating electors, and by small states who increased their power given the minimum of three electors per state. The compromise was reached after other proposals, including a direct election for president (as proposed by Hamilton among others), failed to get traction among slave states. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt describe it as "not a product of constitutional theory or farsighted design.

In 1787, the Constitutional Convention used the Virginia Plan as the basis for discussions, as the Virginia proposal was the first. The Virginia Plan called for Congress to elect the president. Delegates from a majority of states agreed to this mode of election. After being debated, delegates came to oppose nomination by Congress for the reason that it could violate the separation of powers. Later in the convention, a committee formed to work out various details. They included the mode of election of the president, including final recommendations for the electors, a group of people apportioned among the states in the same numbers as their representatives in Congress (the formula for which had been resolved in lengthy debates resulting in the Connecticut Compromise and Three-Fifths Compromise), but chosen by each state "in such manner as its Legislature may direct". Committee member Gouverneur Morris explained the reasons for the change.

Once the Electoral College had been decided on, several delegates (Mason, Butler, Morris, Wilson, and Madison) openly recognized its ability to protect the election process from cabal, corruption, intrigue, and faction. There was one difficulty, however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of Negroes.

The Federalist Papers

In The Federalist Papers, James Madison explained his views on the selection of the president and the Constitution. In Federalist No. 39, Madison argued that the Constitution was designed to be a mixture of state-based and population-based government. Congress would have two houses: the state-based Senate and the population-based House of Representatives.

Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 68, published on March 12, 1788, laid out what he believed were the key advantages to the Electoral College. The electors come directly from the people and them alone, for that purpose only, and for that time only. This avoided a party-run legislature or a permanent body that could be influenced by foreign interests before each election. Hamilton explained that the election was to take place among all the states, so no corruption in any state could taint "the great body of the people" in their selection. The choice was to be made by a majority of the Electoral College, as majority rule is critical to the principles of republican government.

Hamilton argued that electors meeting in the state capitals were able to have information unavailable to the general public, in a time before telecommunications. Another consideration was that the decision would be made without "tumult and disorder", as it would be a broad-based one made simultaneously in various locales where the decision makers could deliberate reasonably, not in one place where decision makers could be threatened or intimidated. If the Electoral College did not achieve a decisive majority, then the House of Representatives was to choose the president from among the top five candidates, ensuring selection of a presiding officer administering the laws would have both ability and good character.

In the Federalist No. 10, James Madison argued against "an interested and overbearing majority" and the "mischiefs of faction" in an electoral system. He defined a faction as "a number of citizens whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community." A republican government (i.e., representative democracy, as opposed to direct democracy) combined with the principles of federalism (with distribution of voter rights and separation of government powers), would countervail against factions.

Evolution of the Electoral College

Although the United States Constitution refers to "Electors" and "electors", neither the phrase "Electoral College" nor any other name is used to describe the electors collectively. It was not until the early 19th century that the name "Electoral College" came into general usage as the collective designation for the electors selected to cast votes for president and vice president.

The Twelfth Amendment

Responding to the problems from those elections, Congress proposed on December 9, 1803, and three-fourths of the states ratified by June 15, 1804, the Twelfth Amendment.

From State Legislatures to Popular Election

In spite of Hamilton's assertion that electors were to be chosen by mass election, initially, state legislatures chose the electors in most of the states. States progressively changed to selection by popular election. In 1824, there were six states in which electors were still legislatively appointed. By 1832, only South Carolina had not transitioned.

Criticisms and Controversies

The Potential for Discrepancies Between the Popular Vote and the Electoral Vote

Although the majority of candidates who have won the popular vote have also won the Electoral College, five presidents have been elected who did not receive the most popular votes. This has occurred five times in American history: 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000 and 2016. In this system, a presidential nominee could lose the election and still win the popular vote. The 2016 presidential election highlighted the inequity in the Electoral College.

"Faithless Electors"

Historical practice dictates that presidential electors vote for president according to their state’s popular vote results. “Faithless electors” - those who vote contrary to the popular vote count - have never decided the presidency. Electors in Michigan and Utah who vote contrary to their state’s popular vote results automatically lose their position and are replaced. Supreme Court affirmed in July that states have the right to put in place enforcement measures to ensure electors vote for their party’s nominee, if she or he wins the popular vote. Chiafalo v. Washington centered on three electors in Washington who violated their pledges to support Hillary Clinton in 2016, voting instead for former Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Unequal Weight of Votes

There are some states that hold a larger weight in determining the electoral vote. Equal Votes is an organization that is working to reform the Electoral College. They are proposing that electoral votes be equally distributed based on state populations.

Potential Scenarios and Future of the Electoral College

The Possibility of a Contested Election

Because Trump has repeatedly said that he won’t accept the election results if he loses, there is a not-zero chance the Supreme Court will decide the presidential election as it did in 2000. With countless potential unknowns before and after Nov.

Swing States

There are a baker’s dozen swing states that Trump and Biden each have a reasonable chance of winning. Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin represent 199 electoral votes among them - 37% of the 538 total electoral votes and 74% of the 270 needed to win the presidency.

Potential for an Electoral College Blowout

CNN data expert Harry Enten said that despite being a close race on the surface, there is a high chance that the election will actually end with the winner receiving over 300 Electoral College votes.

CNN data reporter Harry Enten argued that according to current margins, there may be an Electoral College blowout in store.

"There is a… 60% chance that the winner of this election gets at least 300 electoral votes versus just a 40% chance that the winner ends up getting less than 300 electoral votes," he said. "So for all the talk that we had about this election being historically close, which it is, chances are the winner will still actually score a relative blowout in the Electoral College."

Enten highlighted how battleground states tend to end up breaking in one direction.

"History tells us that it is more likely than not that all of the swing state polling errors would move in one direction," the polling expert said.

"So this time around, don‘t be surprised at the swing-state polls when they underestimate one candidate, they underestimate all of them in the states, and that would lead to a relative Electoral College blowout with of one of the candidates winning at least 300 electoral votes," he concluded.

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