The Electoral College
Andie Downs
ENG 105
Research Paper Final

Every four years on the Tuesday after the first Monday of November, the election for the next President and Vice President of the United States takes place. Although thousands of individuals cast their vote for their candidate of choice on this day, it is really Electors that they are voting for. The electors that are selected will go on to choose the next President and Vice President of the United States. For example, the candidate that could win the popular vote of a state is not guaranteed because election is actually decided by the group of electors, called the Electoral College. The U.S Electoral College is the division of the government that selects the President and Vice President of the United States. It consists of 538 electors, where the amount from each state equals its number of members in its congressional delegation. In two states, Nebraska and Maine, the candidate is determined by majority vote and the winner of the popular vote receives 2 electoral votes (“What is the Electoral College?”). Allotting a number of votes to each state in this way is inaccurate and doesn’t properly represent the vastly larger or smaller states. Although the use of an Electoral College during a presidential election is considered a key element to democracy, its application to the process makes it unrepresentative of the voters and elections should instead be based on the popular vote of the people.
When the constitution was created in 1787, the founders proposed several different ways to conduct the election process. The idea of having Congress alone elect the president and vice-president was proposed, but was almost immediately turned down. They felt that it could leave too many hard-feelings in Congress as well as leading to potential corruption and bargaining within the houses. Another idea was to have the state legislatures choose the president, but was unconsidered for the same reasons. Direct voting of a state’s population was of course considered but the founders had also outlined previously in the constitution that they didn’t believe the average citizen was apt enough to select the president without a separate process being implemented. They worried that basing elections off of the popular vote would give overly populated areas more opportunity to vote too highly in favor of a certain candidate or that citizens would only vote for the candidate from their state (Kimberlang). Today, the Electoral College has 2 electors from each state represented by its U.S. senators, plus the number of its representatives. Electors themselves can be elected by two ways; either by being nominated by his or her state party or the elector actually campaigns for a spot. Electors cannot be a member of congress, a high-ranking U.S. official, or someone “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” (Weingast).
When voting for a presidential and vice-presidential candidate one is actually voting for the elector of that political party. Once a state votes during the election, the electors then choose the candidate that state will support through one of several systems. One is the winner-take-all system, where all electors go with the candidate that wins the popular vote, no matter how close it is. Another is the congressional district method, which is used in Maine and Nebraska where the vote is split between the electoral vote and the congressional district vote. The state is split into congressional districts and the winner of the popular vote in each district will receive an electoral vote. Most times electors will choose the candidate that received the most votes in the state that they represent (Bonsor). There are instances where faithless electors vote without following the popular vote, and vote based on their own opinion or from being bribed. There are four candidates in U.S. history that have won the election by winning the electoral vote, but losing the popular vote. The first instance of this happened in 1824 when John Adams received 38,000 less votes than Andrew Jackson, but neither won the majority electoral vote. That election was decided by the House of Representatives and Adams was made president. This occurrence happened again in 1876 when Rutherford B. Hayes won by the support of small states, the only time in history that the support of the small states won a candidate the election against Samuel J. Tilden. He had the support of five of the six small states as well as the electoral votes from Colorado. In 1888 Benjamin Harrison lost popular vote by over 95, 000 votes, but won electoral vote by 65 in the election against Grover Cleveland. This demonstrated the idea that the founding fathers were trying to prevent; a candidate winning significantly from a certain part of the country. The majority of the southern states voted in favor of Cleveland, totaling at over 425, 000 votes (Bonsor). The most recent instance occurred in 2000 when Al Gore received 50, 992, 335 votes and George Bush received 50, 455, 156 votes. The total amount of votes for each candidate was so close in Florida that they issued a recount of the ballots. Bush won Florida’s electoral vote giving him a total of 271 electoral votes versus Gore who had received 266 votes. In elections today, a candidate must receive 270 out of 538 votes and if neither candidate receives the majority electoral vote, it is then decided by the House of Representatives (Bonsor).
Although this system has been in place since the very first presidential election, there are several problems that come with the application of the Electoral College to the election system. It acts as a weighed voting system that gives more power to the states that are appointed more electoral votes, but is still able to allow the smaller states to dictate an election (“Black”). Electoral votes are decided by the population of a state, where larger states will have more. The main goal of the candidate running for president is to gain the support of the right combination of states to receive 270 votes (Schulman). It doesn’t matter whether a candidate received 51% or 80% of the popular vote, the determining factor of the victor is the amount of the electoral votes that a candidate can receive. Candidates are then forced to pay extra attention to the swing states that do not hold affiliation to a specific party. For example, Florida is often the state that determines the victory of a candidate. This causes candidates to appease that state more, often hosting more events and doing more service in areas where they know they can gain people’s support (Black). This causes them to pay less attention to the states that they already know either have or don’t have their vote. There are more than 40 states that candidates will automatically know that they will either win the vote of or lose the vote of. One of the biggest criticisms of the Electoral College is that it distorts the one-person, one-vote idea because the electoral votes aren’t based off of the popular vote, causing significant overrepresentation of the smaller states in the college. In the 2010 census, it states that an individual person in Wyoming has almost four times more the weight of a vote from an individual in California. Another flaw is the possibility of a 269-269 tie vote, in which there would not a victor come Inauguration Day (Black). If a tie occurs, the decision of the president and vice-president is thrown into the House of Representatives and it would be determined based on the support of a severe majority of the votes from states. This only happened one time in the 1800 election of Thomas Jefferson versus Aaron Burr, which led to the 12th amendment, stating that an elector could now indicate which candidate they wanted to be president and which one for vice-president. The Framers thought that the typical decision make of the election would be from a tie of the electoral votes and then it would be decided by the House of Representatives (Black).
Electoral College is essentially a weighed system that gives more power to the states with more votes but gives the power of deciding an elections to a swing state. Many states have already made an effort to make the voting process more true to the popular vote. As of October 2012, California, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia had ruled that the candidate that wins the national popular vote will win the electoral vote for the state. Colorado and Rhode Island have passed bills in both houses for that reform, as well as 10 other states that have passed it in at least one. These states making an effort in changing the way that things have been is only a start in the evolution of the election process. Many are in favor of basing the election off of the popular vote, while others feel that there is a better way to elect the president all together. The only downside to that is that smaller states wouldn’t be equally represented. If things don’t change, it will continue to be a problem into the future (Bonsor).

Works Cited * Black, Eric. “10 reasons why the Electoral College is a problem.” MINNPOST. 12 Nov. 2016. <https://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/2012/10/10-reasons-why-electoral-college-problem> * Bonsor, Kevin and Dove, Laurie L.. “How the Electoral College Works.”
HOWSTUFFWORKS. http://people.howstuffworks.com/electoral-college1.htm * Kimberlong, William C.. “The Electoral College.” 2008. Web. 24 Nov. 2016. < http://uselectionatlas.org/INFORMATION/INFORMATION/electcollege_history.php> * Schulman, Marc. “Why the Electoral College?” History Central. 24 Nov. 2016. Web. < http://www.historycentral.com/elections/Electoralcollgewhy.html> * Weingast, David E. "Electoral College." Reviewed by Kay J. Maxwell. The New Book of Knowledge. 2007. Grolier Online. 25 July 2007. http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/electoral-college * “What is the Electoral College?” U.S. Electoral College. 24 Nov. 2016. < http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/about.html>