November 1, 2024
Did you know when you cast your ballot for president and vice president you aren’t actually voting for that candidate. You’re really voting for a slate of electors who have pledged to vote for that candidate.
In this country we have an electoral college. And to understand that i have to take you back…way back.
“we the union? No. “we the people”! Ah yes! But what do we say next?
The founding fathers were worried.
Gasp!
Worried that that if they voted based on a popular vote the biggest states would always select the president. So to give the smaller states a voice they compromised and came up with the electoral college. (graphic: constitution describes electoral college article ii, section 1, clause 2 modified in 12th and 23rd amendments).
Currently there are 538 electors. Each state is allotted electors based on the number of senators and representatives in congress in that state. Here is a map of the United States and you can see each state and how many electors they have. To win the presidency you need to win 270 electoral votes.
Electors are just people who are chosen by their party ahead of the election and are usually selected because of their loyalty and service to the party. For example if vice president Harris wins the popular vote in California then the democratic electors will cast the state’s 54 electoral votes for her. And if former president Trump wins the popular vote in the state of Texas the republican electors will cast the state’s 40 electoral votes for him.
In most states electors pledge to vote for the candidate who wins the popular vote in that state. Most states are winner take all. But in Maine and Nebraska they don’t do it that way. Their electoral votes are allocated “proportionally”. Now – it is true that there is nothing in the constitution or in federal law that requires electors to vote for the candidate they are pledged to vote for.
What?? We did not plan for that.
Yeah. There’s a term for those electors – they’re called “faithless electors” and the fact is in all of u-s history there’s only been a handful of faithless electors. None have ever changed the outcome of a presidential election. Now – most states do have some kind of law that requires electors to vote for the candidate they are pledged to cast their vote for and in some states a faithless elector can be replaced or fined if they don’t or have their vote be voided out.
But you have to understand– winning the popular vote is not the same as winning the electoral college. You can win the popular vote but not win the electoral college. And it’s happened. Five times in this country.
Can’t be.
Oh it can. These men became president of the United States by winning the electoral college but did not win the popular vote. (John Quincy Adams (1824) Rutherford B. Hayes (1876) Benjamin Harrison (1888) George W. Bush (2000) Donald Trump (2016)
Whether you like it or not the electoral college has withstood the test of time – but it’s always been controversial.
