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The Electoral College

The president is elected by the Electoral College and not by popular vote. The Electoral College is composed of electors from each state. The number of electors each state is allotted is dictated in Article II:

Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress; but no Senator or Representative . . . shall be appointed an elector.

As president of the Senate, Vice President Joe Biden presided over the Electoral College vote count that reelected President Barack Obama in 2012.

There are a total of 538 electoral votes cast (including three for the District of Columbia), and a candidate needs a simple majority—270—to win. For most states, the candidate who wins the popular vote in that state wins that state’s electors. The only exceptions are the states of Maine and Nebraska, which allocate their electoral votes based on the popular vote in each state’s congressional district. The candidate who wins the popular vote in the state also earns two statewide votes.

Each candidate’s party signs up a slate of electors, who are then pledged to vote for that candidate. As an example, New York casts 29 electoral votes. In 2012, the two major candidates, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, signed up slates of 29 electors each in the state (see Figure 5.1). Because Obama won the popular vote in New York, his slate voted in the Electoral College and Romney’s slate did not. The winner-take-all system often results in candidates earning a far higher percentage of electoral votes compared with the popular vote. For example, in 1992, Bill Clinton earned 43% of the popular vote and President George H. W. Bush earned 38%. (Independent candidate H. Ross Perot earned 19% of the vote but did not win the popular vote in any state. This means that Perot did not win any Electoral College votes.) Bill Clinton won the Electoral College vote with 69%; Clinton earned less than half of the popular vote and more than two thirds of the Electoral College vote.

The Founding Fathers established the Electoral College as a compromise between election of the president by Congress and election by popular vote.

Figure of a color-coded map of the United States illustrating the Electoral College votes per state in the 2012 election between Democratic President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney. The states that voted for President Barack Obama are in blue, while the states that voted for Mitt Romney are in red. Obama received 332 votes, while Romney received 206 votes.

In choosing where to invest resources, candidates and their campaign organizations usually choose states with close races (often called battleground states). They tend not to spend too much time or money in states where they are already likely to win or lose that state’s Electoral College vote. Because minority groups, whether racial, ethnic, or religious, tend to be concentrated in large, electoral vote-rich states, the electoral system provides representation for these groups that they otherwise might not enjoy. If they vote as a group, they can form a voting bloc that can make or break the state for a candidate, because the winner of the state’s popular vote (no matter how slim the margin) will win that state’s electoral vote in all but two states.

Still, there are those who maintain that the Electoral College system is not democratic. It rarely happens that a candidate who wins the popular vote loses the Electoral College, but it has happened four times, including 1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000. In the presidential election of 1876, Samuel Tilden, a Democrat from New York, won the popular vote over Republican Rutherford B. Hayes from Ohio. The Electoral College vote was in question because Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina each sent two sets of electoral votes to Congress.

In 2000, Democratic Vice President Al Gore won the popular vote over Republican Texas Governor George W. Bush. Gore was leading in the Electoral College on Election Day, although the outcome in Florida was unknown. Without Florida’s 25 electoral votes, neither candidate would have the needed 270 electoral votes to win (266 for Gore, 246 for Bush). The number of total electoral votes cast was 537, and not 538, in 2000 because an elector from the District of Columbia abstained from voting in the Electoral College that year, although Florida’s electoral votes would put either candidate over the top. After several recounts and an order from the Florida Supreme Court to have a full recount, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the recounting to stop. Bush was declared the winner, and Gore conceded defeat. Many Florida voters, especially minorities, believed that their votes were not counted because of confusion about ballot design, misplaced ballots, and other concerns. This election especially left a sour aftertaste because it appeared to many that the U.S. Supreme Court decided the outcome of a presidential election for the first time.

TEXTBOOK REFERANCE

POL 201 2e: American Government, Second Edition - Terri Susan Fine