The (Why-Is-US-So-Weird) Electoral College
Contents:
A democracy means that citizens directly vote for their elected officials. For the most part, that is true in the US. But one election stands out: the presidential one. Here, the official is not directly elected by the people. Instead, it is left to the Electoral College.
The Electoral College is a group of people who gather every four years from all 50 states and D.C. to elect the president. When a citizen votes for a candidate, they are not directly electing them. Instead, the citizen helps choose who the electors will be voting for when the College convenes in D.C. The number of electors a state has is based on the number of House representatives it has plus the number of U.S. senators it has.
There are two ways electoral votes are distributed to a candidate by a state. The first method is called winner-takes-all. When a candidate wins a state, all of its electoral votes go to that candidate. As of 2024, 48 states and D.C. use this method. The second method is called the congressional district method. When a candidate wins a state, instead of all its electoral votes going to that candidate, only two go to them. The remaining electoral votes go to the winners of their respective congressional districts. For example, let’s say a state has 5 congressional districts. The Orange Party candidate wins the state overall, but 1 out of the 5 districts votes for the Purple Party candidate. In this scenario, the Orange candidate wins 6 electoral votes, and the Purple candidate wins 1 electoral vote. The congressional district method is used in Maine and Nebraska.
You might be thinking, “What’s the point in all of this Electoral College stuff?” Well, you have to look at 1787, when the Constitution was written. At that time, getting information from one place to another was hard. The thinking was that if people were about to vote, and a candidate's new policy was just announced, there wouldn't be enough time for the citizens to react and vote accordingly. So, the Electoral College was established so that more informed people would make the final decision.
Now, you might be thinking, “Wait…I thought electors were supposed to vote for the majority candidate.” That’s how it usually works, but electors are not required in every state to elect the candidate their state voted for. Electors who vote for the opposite candidate are called unpledged electors. Their presence has not changed the result of an election to be undemocratic in the history of the US.
All this time, we have been talking about electors in states. But what happens at the final stage of elections? Well, voting! A candidate needs at least 270 of the electors’ votes to win the presidency. But what happens if there is a tie, or when no one reaches a majority? If that happens, the House of Representatives votes for the president, and the Senate votes for the vice president. Why are they separate? When our country was founded, the election winner became president, and the runner-up became vice president. * An example of no candidate winning the election occurred in 1824 when Andrew Jackson received 99 electoral votes, John Quincy Adams got 84 votes, William H. Crawford won 41, and Henry Clay received 37. Jackson would win the election in a typical plurality system because he had the most electoral votes. However, the vote was sent to the House because of the tiebreaker rule, and most of the Representatives preferred Adams. He became the 6th president.
Another thing about the Electoral College is that a state’s electoral votes are not proportional to its population. This is because of the two votes that represent that state's senators, and it causes the electoral college to be wildly disproportionate. For example, a candidate wins the 40 least-populous states and DC. This means they have won the states with a combined population of about 46.498% of the US. But in doing so, they won 52.8% of the Electoral College! Many critics of the system point out that the process is very undemocratic.
So, now you know what the Electoral College is. The system has many pros and cons, and it is important to know about them!
Side notes by a history geek (yours truly):
*This law made for some interesting combinations: in 1797, John Adams of the Federalist Party became president, while Thomas Jefferson of the Democratic-Republican Party became vice president. The two parties had completely opposing policies. 🤣
Image credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_College?scrlybrkr=aad20f5d#/media/File:ElectoralCollege2024.svg