The Electoral College: Origins, Intentions, and Modern Implications

The Electoral College is a unique feature of the United States government. It is the body that ultimately elects the President and Vice President. Understanding its creation requires delving into the historical context of the late 18th century, the debates at the Constitutional Convention, and the compromises that shaped the nation's founding.

What is the Electoral College?

In the United States, the Electoral College is the group of presidential electors that is formed every four years for the sole purpose of voting for the president and vice president in the presidential election. This process is described in Article Two of the Constitution. The number of electors from each state is equal to that state's congressional delegation which is the number of senators (two) plus the number of Representatives for that state. Federal office holders, including senators and representatives, cannot be electors. A simple majority of electoral votes (270 or more) is required to elect the president and vice president. The states and the District of Columbia hold a statewide or district-wide popular vote on Election Day in November to choose electors based upon how they have pledged to vote for president and vice president, with some state laws prohibiting faithless electors. The electors meet and vote in December, and the inaugurations of the president and vice president take place in January.

Federal agencies provide step-by-step descriptions of how electors are appointed, meet in December, and how Congress counts the electoral votes. Additionally, the Twenty-third Amendment granted the federal District of Columbia three electors (bringing the total number from 535 to 538). Since 1964, there have been 538 electors. States select 535 of the electors, this number matches the aggregate total of their congressional delegations. The additional three electors come from the Twenty-third Amendment, ratified in 1961, providing that the district established pursuant to Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 as the seat of the federal government (namely, Washington, D.C.) is entitled to the same number of electors as the least populous state. In practice, that results in Washington D.C.

The Constitutional Convention: A Crucible of Ideas

The Electoral College was officially selected as the means of electing president towards the end of the Constitutional Convention. 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.

Reasons Behind the Electoral College

The framers of the Constitution did not anticipate political parties. Indeed George Washington's Farewell Address in 1796 included an urgent appeal to avert such parties. Neither did the framers anticipate candidates "running" for president.

Several factors contributed to the creation of the Electoral College:

Compromise Between Differing Views

The method of selection for the president was one of the most controversial topics during this time. While some delegates proposed a national popular vote, others were wary of allowing ordinary citizens to select the president, and feared that a national election would be too complicated given the technology at the time.

Concerns About "Too Much Democracy"

When the idea of a popular vote was raised, they griped openly that it could result in too much democracy. With few objections, they quickly dispensed with the notion that the people might choose their leader.

State Representation

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.

The Influence of Slavery

The Electoral College was created because of 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. Delegates from the slaveholding South had another rationale for opposing the direct election method, and they had no qualms about articulating it: Doing so would be to their disadvantage. Even James Madison, who professed a theoretical commitment to popular democracy, succumbed to the realities of the situation. The future president acknowledged that “the people at large was in his opinion the fittest” to select the chief executive. And yet, in the same breath, he captured the sentiment of the South in the most “diplomatic” terms: “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 the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.” Behind Madison’s statement were the stark facts: The populations in the North and South were approximately equal, but roughly one-third of those living in the South were held in bondage. Because of its considerable, nonvoting slave population, that region would have less clout under a popular-vote system. The ultimate solution was an indirect method of choosing the president, one that could leverage the three-fifths compromise, the Faustian bargain they’d already made to determine how congressional seats would be apportioned. With about 93 percent of the country’s slaves toiling in just five southern states, that region was the undoubted beneficiary of the compromise, increasing the size of the South’s congressional delegation by 42 percent.

Safeguarding Against Corruption and Factionalism

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. 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.

The Evolution of the Electoral College

Article II, Section 1, Clause 3 of the Constitution provided the original plan by which the electors voted for president. Under the original plan, each elector cast two votes for president; electors did not vote for vice president. Individual electors would be elected by citizens on a district-by-district basis.

The 12th Amendment

In 1803, the Twelfth Amendment modified the Electoral College to prevent another Jefferson-Burr-type debacle. 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. Prior to 1804, electors made no distinction between candidates when voting for president and vice president; the candidate with the majority of votes became President and the candidate with the second-most votes became Vice President. The Twelfth Amendment-proposed in 1803 and ratified in 1804-changed that original process, requiring electors to separate their votes and denote who they voted for as President and Vice President.

The 13th Amendment

Six decades later, the Thirteenth Amendment outlawed slavery, thus ridding the South of its windfall electors.

From State Legislatures to Popular Vote

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.

The 23rd Amendment

The District of Columbia has had three electors since the Twenty-third Amendment was ratified in 1961.

How the Electoral College Works Today

Today, the Electoral College consists of 538 electors. A majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect the President. Your State has the same number of electors as it does Members in its Congressional delegation: one for each Member in the House of Representatives plus two Senators. The District of Columbia is allocated 3 electors and treated like a State for purposes of the Electoral College under the 23rd Amendment of the Constitution.

Choosing Electors

Each candidate running for President in your State has their own group of electors (known as a slate). The slates are generally chosen by the candidate’s political party in your State, but State laws vary on how the electors are selected and what their responsibilities are.

The General Election

The general election is held every four years on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. When you vote for a Presidential candidate you are actually voting for your candidate's preferred electors. Most States have a “winner-take-all” system that awards all electors to the Presidential candidate who wins the State's popular vote. After the general election, your State's Executive prepares a Certificate of Ascertainment listing the names of all the individuals on the slates for each candidate. The Certificate of Ascertainment also lists the number of votes each individual received and shows which individuals were appointed as your State's electors.

The Meeting of Electors

The meeting of the electors takes place on the first Tuesday after the second Wednesday in December after the general election. The electors meet in their respective States, where they cast their votes for President and Vice President on separate ballots. Your State’s electors’ votes are recorded on a Certificate of Vote, which is prepared at the meeting by the electors.

Counting the Votes

Each State’s electoral votes are counted in a joint session of Congress on the 6th of January in the year following the meeting of the electors. Members of the House and Senate meet in the House Chamber to conduct the official count of electoral votes. The Vice President of the United States, as President of the Senate, presides over the count in a strictly ministerial manner and announces the results of the vote.

State Allocation

Electoral votes are allocated among the States based on the Census. Each State (which includes the District of Columbia for the Electoral College) decides how to appoint its electors; however, they must do so according to law enacted before Election Day. All States, except for Maine and Nebraska, have a winner-take-all policy where the State looks only at the overall winner of the state-wide popular vote. In Maine and Nebraska, two electoral votes are assigned in this manner, while the remaining electoral votes are allocated based on the plurality of votes in each of their congressional districts. The federal district, Washington, D.C., allocates its 3 electoral votes to the winner of its single district election.

Contingent Election

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. In the case of an Electoral College deadlock or if no candidate receives the majority of votes, a “contingent election” is held. The election of the President goes to the House of Representatives. Each state delegation casts a single vote for one of the top three contenders from the initial election to determine a winner. Only two Presidential elections (1800 and 1824) have been decided in the House.

Criticisms and Defense of the Electoral College

There have been other attempts to change the system, particularly after cases in which a candidate wins the popular vote, but loses in the Electoral College. Five times a candidate has won the popular vote and lost the election. Andrew Jackson in 1824 (to John Quincy Adams); Samuel Tilden in 1876 (to Rutherford B. Hayes); Grover Cleveland in 1888 (to Benjamin Harrison); Al Gore in 2000 (to George W. Bush); Hillary Clinton in 2016 (to Donald J. Trump).The closest Congress has come to amending the Electoral College since 1804 was during the 91st Congress (1969-1971) when the House passed H.J. Res. 681 which would have eliminated the Electoral College altogether and replaced it with the direct election of a President and Vice President (and a run off if no candidate received more than 40 percent of the vote).

Arguments Against the Electoral College

Critics of the Electoral College are right to denounce it for handing victory to the loser of the popular vote twice in the past two decades. They are also correct to point out that it distorts our politics, including by encouraging presidential campaigns to concentrate their efforts in a few states that are not representative of the country at large. But the disempowerment of black voters needs to be added to that list of concerns, because it is core to what the Electoral College is and what it always has been.

Arguments in Favor of the Electoral College

Among the Electoral College’s supporters, the favorite rationalization is that without the advantage, politicians might disregard a large swath of the country’s voters, particularly those in small or geographically inconvenient states. Even if the claim were true, it’s hardly conceivable that switching to a popular-vote system would lead candidates to ignore more voters than they do under the current one. Three-quarters of Americans live in states where most of the major parties’ presidential candidates do not campaign.

The Electoral College in the Modern Era

The race-consciousness establishment-and retention-of the Electoral College has supported an entitlement program that our 21st-century democracy cannot justify.

The Impact on Black Voters

The current system has a distinct, adverse impact on black voters, diluting their political power. Because the concentration of black people is highest in the South, their preferred presidential candidate is virtually assured to lose their home states’ electoral votes. Despite black voting patterns to the contrary, five of the six states whose populations are 25 percent or more black have been reliably red in recent presidential elections. Three of those states have not voted for a Democrat in more than four decades. Under the Electoral College, black votes are submerged. It’s the precise reason for the success of the southern strategy. It’s precisely how, as Buckley might say, the South has prevailed.

Disproportionate Representation

Do smaller states have more representation in the electoral college? On a proportional basis, yes. This overrepresentation occurs because every state receives electoral college votes equivalent to the number of seats that represent it in Congress. Since every state has two senators, every state gets these two electoral college votes regardless of its size. We can look to see how much leverage an individual voter has in a presidential election by dividing its population by its number of Electoral College votes. The most populous state - California - has a population of about 39 million people and 54 electoral votes. So, California has one electoral college vote for about every 722,000 residents. Wyoming, the least populous state, has 580,000 people and three Electoral College votes. So, Wyoming has one Electoral College vote for about every 194,000 residents. Wyoming voters therefore have more than three times as much average influence on the outcome of the election when compared to California voters. Similar arithmetic could easily show that Vermont voters have dramatically more influence than Texas voters.

Political Advantages

Which political party benefits most from the Electoral College system today? The Republican Party. In two of the past six presidential elections, a Democratic candidate (Al Gore in 2000 and Hilary Clinton in 2016) won the national popular vote but lost in the electoral college. Such events are called “inversions” by political scientists. Inversions have happened in the past as well but are historically rare.

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