United States Electoral College
The United States Electoral College is the electoral college which chooses the President and Vice President of the United States at the conclusion of each Presidential election. The Electoral College was established by Article Two, Section One of the U.S. Constitution, and meets every four years with electors from each state. The electoral process was modified in 1804 with the ratification of the 12th Amendment, and again in 1961 with the ratification of the 23rd Amendment.
For a historic overview of the U.S. Electoral College election maps, see U.S. presidential election maps.
How it works
Election for President of the United States and Vice President of the United States is indirect, for which voting takes place every four years on Election Day. Although ballots typically list the names of the presidential candidates, voters within the 50 states and the District of Columbia actually choose electors when they vote for President and Vice President. These electors in turn cast the official votes for those two offices.
In most states and in D.C., the plurality winner of the popular vote for President within that state receives all of the state's electors, while all other candidates receive none. Only in Maine and Nebraska does the election follow a model more closely based on Congressional Elections: For each congressional district in those two states, the plurality winner of that district receives one district elector ("Representative-like" elector, so to speak), while the two at-large electors ("Senator-like" electors) are given to the plurality winner of the whole state. This method has been used in Maine since 1972 and Nebraska since 1996, though neither has ever split its electoral votes.
Each state's electors meet in their respective state capitals in December, 41 days following the election, at which time they cast their electoral votes. Thus the electoral college never meets as one body. The electoral votes are then sealed and sent to the President of the Senate (i.e. the sitting Vice President of the United States), who retains them until the new Congress convenes in January. At that time, the votes are opened and counted in the presence of both houses of Congress. The candidate who receives a majority of electoral votes for President becomes President, and the candidate who receives a majority of electoral votes for Vice President becomes Vice President.
If no candidate receives an absolute electoral majority for President, then the new House of Representatives is required to go into session immediately to vote for President. In this case, the top three electoral vote getters for President are the candidates for the House of Representatives to select from, and the House votes en-bloc by state for this purpose (that is, one vote per state, which is determined by the majority decision of the delegation from that state; if a state delegation is evenly split that state is considered as abstaining). This vote would be repeated if necessary until one candidate receives the votes of more than half the state delegations -- at least 26 state votes, given the current number, 50, of states in the union.
If no candidate receives an absolute majority of electoral votes for Vice President, then the United States Senate must do the same, with the top two vote getters for that office as candidates. The Senate votes in the normal manner in this case, not by States. It is unclear if the sitting Vice President would be entitled to cast his usual tie-breaking vote if the Senate should be evenly split on the matter.
If the House of Representatives has not chosen a winner in time for the inauguration (noon on January 20), then the Constitution of the United States specifies that the new Vice President becomes Acting President until the House selects a President. If the winner of the Vice Presidential election is not known by then either, then under the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives would become Acting President until the House selects a President or the Senate selects a Vice President.
It is unclear what would happen if a President has been selected but the Senate remains deadlocked on a Vice President past Inauguration Day. On the one hand, the Twelfth Amendment specifies that the Senate should choose the Vice President, and it does not admit of a time limit on the selection process. On the other hand, the Twenty-Third Amendment allows the President to nominate a Vice President if a vacancy should occur.
As of 2005, the House of Representatives has elected the President on two occasions, in 1801 and in 1825. The Senate has chosen the Vice President once, in 1837.
Alloting electors to the states
The number of electors assigned to each state is equal to the total number of Senators (always 2) and Representatives that the state has in Congress, but no federal officer or employee, including Senators and Representatives, may serve as an elector. However, electors may be elected state officials, party leaders, or persons who have a personal or political affiliation with the Presidential candidate. With the adoption of the Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1961, the District of Columbia is treated as a state for purposes of electoral votes, but can in no event choose more electors than the least populous state (however that latter clause does not currently make any difference; even if it did not exist, there would not be enough population in the District by a wide margin to give it any more than 3 electors).
There are currently 538 electoral votes available in each presidential election (100 Senators + 435 Representatives + 3 votes for D.C. = 538 electoral votes). Therefore, candidates must receive a majority of 270 electoral votes to become President and Vice President. In theory even in a pure two-party race, a candidate could win the election by receiving only 23% of all popular votes, if these were distributed in an (for him/her) ideal way -- i.e. if he won enough small states by the narrowest possible margin and got no votes at all in the larger states. The fact that there is an even number of electoral votes available since the passing of the 23rd amendment makes a 269/269 tie conceivable, although none has occurred yet. In that case the election would be thrown into the House of Representatives even though only two candidates received any electoral votes.
In most states, the names of the electors do not appear on the ballot at all; instead, a notation on the ballot indicates that voters are selecting the "electors for" followed by the names of the candidates for President and for Vice President. All but two states (Maine and Nebraska) use a winner-take-all system. The candidate with a plurality of votes gains all of the state's electors. The two exceptions allot the electors to areas within the state. In many states, the electors are legally free to cast their votes for anyone they choose, although in some states to vote for someone other than their pledged candidate is a misdemeanor crime, in others a felony, and in a few it is merely illegal without penalty.
In practice, however, electors very rarely vote for a candidate they are not pledged to (as they are chosen by the political parties specifically for voting for that candidate), except as a form of protest vote. Individuals choosing to do this are often referred to as "faithless electors" about which, more below. It is uncommon to know in advance that an elector may be inclined to vote in such a fashion, and such deviations usually come as a surprise. Of course, if an Electoral College tie were looming on the horizon after Election Day, more electors might see a reason to switch sides, simply to avoid the election being drawn out until January by going into the House of Representatives.
History
Scholars continue to debate the reasons for the adoption of the Electoral College. Some believe it was created to protect small states. Others believe that the Founding Fathers intended to create a system of indirect election whereby the electors would come to a carefully considered decision to nominate a selection of good candidates and then the House of Representatives would again make a careful consideration of the names presented. Others still believe the system of electing the President was given little thought beyond a desire to have George Washington as the first President, pointing in particular to the extremely casual way in which the Vice President was selected, and that Congress was intended to be the most important part of the Constitution.
Still others hold that it was devised as a compromise between the election of a President by the states and by the Congress. Initially the electors were selected by the state legislatures, and it was not until later that states started holding a popular poll for the presidential elections to determine how they would cast their votes. Yet another theory contends that the Framers strongly opposed the development of political parties, as evidenced by the total absence of any reference to parties in the Constitution, and were aware of the difficulties in mass communication, and were attempting to devise a system that would function well with neither cheap, instantaneous, nationwide communication nor a strong political party system.
The electoral college may have been implemented to negotiate compromises in cases of a split vote where each state was pushing its own native son. The U.S. presidential primary and the emergence of a two-party system has largely rendered this historical. One lasting theory is that the electoral college helps to soften the effect of votes from densely populated centers (major U.S. cities and the District of Columbia) which may steer away from the concerns of the rest of the country. Others have noted that the Electoral College enabled the Founding Fathers to deftly incorporate the Connecticut Compromise and three-fifths compromise into the system of choosing the President and Vice President, thereby sparing the convention further acrimony over the issue of state representation.
Regardless of why the system was chosen, the term "electoral college" is not used in the U.S. Constitution, and it wasn't until the early 1800s that it came into general usage as the unofficial designation for the group of citizens selected to cast votes for President and Vice President. It was first written into Federal law in 1845, and today the term appears in 3 U.S.C. section 4, in the section heading and in the text as "college of electors."
Section 1, Article II of the Constitution says, "Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof 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, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector." It then goes on to describe how the electors vote for President.
Originally, each elector voted for two persons, with no designation for President or Vice President. The person receiving the greatest number of votes (provided that such a number was a majority of electors) would be President, while the individual who was in second place became Vice President (and did not need the backing of the majority of electors; in theory the Vice President could have been elected with the support of as few as two electors if every other elector either cast the sole vote for a candidate, voted for a virtually unanimous choice for President or did not cast their second vote). If no one had received a majority of votes, then the House of Representatives would choose between the five highest vote-getters, with each state casting one vote. In such a case, the person who received the highest number of votes but was not chosen President would become Vice President. If there was ever a tie for second, then the Senate would choose the Vice President.
The original plan, while working extremely well in the absence of political parties and organized presidential campaigns, broke down almost immediately once they developed. In 1796, for instance, rumors of conspiracies led to some Federalist electors only using one of their two votes so that their Presidential candidate John Adams came in first, but the Democrat-Republican candidate for President Thomas Jefferson placed second. Thus, the President and Vice President were from different parties. Although a situation like that is arguably not a problem, the situation that occurred in 1800 was most certainly a problem: Republicans (that is, the 18th- and early 19th-century party, later known as Democratic Republicans, that eventually became the modern Democratic party) Jefferson and Aaron Burr tied the vote. Jefferson was the intended presidential contender, while Burr was the Vice Presidential one. However, electors did not differentiate between the two, nor could they under the system of the time, and all electors supporting them cast one vote for each. The electors for the Federalists, however, arranged it so that one elector voted for the Federalist presidential candidate but not for the Vice Presidential candidate. They voted instead for another person altogether. The election was thrown into the House of Representatives, which was controlled by the Federalists. The House voted 35 times, with Alexander Hamilton offering his support to Thomas Jefferson with the condition that Jefferson support certain Federalist policies and office-holders. Jefferson won on the thirty-sixth ballot after Delaware's only Representative, James Bayard -- a Burr supporter -- abstained in exchange for the terms Hamilton had originally offered. Burr became Vice President. For this, and numerous other reasons, Burr held a grudge against Hamilton, whom he later killed in a duel.
To address the problem of the 1800 election, the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed. It made some minor and major changes to the Constitution. First, electors would no longer cast two ballots for President. Instead, they would cast one vote for President and a separate vote for Vice President. The individual receiving a majority of votes in a particular election would be elected. If no one received a majority in the presidential election, then the House of Representatives would choose between the top three, again voting by state. Similarly, the Senate chooses between the top two in the case of the Vice President. Under the new rules, the House of Representatives did elect the President on one more occasion: the 1824 four-way race between Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, William H. Crawford, and Henry Clay resulted in no candidate receiving a majority of electoral votes. The House elected Adams on the first ballot.
Under the provisions of the Constitution there is no requirement for a state to poll its voters. The state legislature can in theory appoint the electors as it likes, and, until 1860, South Carolina did just this. Furthermore, in 1788 the concept of "democracy" was widely seen as analogous to mob-rule, while the idea of political parties was equally frowned upon, and so the idea of a directly elected head of state was anathema to many. The Federalist Papers suggest that it was commonly assumed by the Founding Fathers that most Presidents would be selected by the House of Representatives, and the order of the articles of Constitution, in which Congress is established in Article I and the presidency in Article II, supports this view.
Faithless electors
On 157 occasions from 1796-2004, presidential electors have cast their vote in a different manner than that prescribed by the popular election results for the state or district they represent. Of those, 71 votes were changed because the original candidate died before the elector was able to cast a vote. Three votes were not cast at all when Electors chose to abstain from casting their Electoral vote for any candidate. The remaining 83 were changed by the elector's personal interest or perhaps by accident. Usually, the faithless electors act alone. An exception was in 1836 when 23 Virginia electors changed their vote together. Still, no faithless elector has ever changed the outcome of any election.
There are laws to punish faithless electors in 24 states. While no faithless elector has ever been punished, the constitutionality of state pledge laws was brought before the Supreme Court in 1952 (Ray v. Blair, 343 US 214). The court ruled in favor of state's right to legally require electors to vote as pledged, as well as remove electors who refuse to pledge. As stated in the ruling, electors are acting as a function of the state, not the federal government. Therefore, states have the right to govern electors.
Recent incidents of faithless electors include:
- 2004 election: An unnamed Minnesota elector, pledged for Democrats John Kerry and John Edwards, cast his/her presidential vote for "John Ewards" (sic), apparently accidentally. (All of Minnesota's electors cast their vice-presidential ballots for John Edwards.) Minnesota's electors cast secret ballots, so unless one of the electors claims responsibility, it is unlikely that the identity of the faithless elector will ever be known.
- 2000 election: D.C. elector Barbara Lett-Simmons, pledged for Democrats Al Gore and Joe Lieberman, cast no electoral votes, protesting what she described as the federal district's "colonial status."
- 1988 election: West Virginia elector Margaret Leach, pledged for Democrats Michael Dukakis and Lloyd Bentsen, instead of casting her votes for the candidates in their positions on the national ticket, cast her presidential vote for Bentsen and her vice-presidential vote for Dukakis.
- 1976 election: Washington state elector Mike Padden, pledged for Republican Gerald Ford and Bob Dole, cast his presidential electoral vote for Ronald Reagan, who had challenged Ford for the Republican nomination. He cast his vice-presidential vote, as pledged, for Dole.
- 1972 election: Virginia elector Roger MacBride, pledged for Republicans Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, cast his electoral votes for Libertarian candidates John Hospers and Theodora Nathan. MacBride's vote for Nathan was the first electoral vote cast for a woman in U.S. history.
- 1968 election: North Carolina elector Lloyd W. Bailey, pledged for Republicans Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, cast his votes for American Independent Party candidates George Wallace and Curtis LeMay
- 1960 election: Oklahoma elector Henry D. Irwin, pledged for Republicans Richard Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., cast his presidential electoral vote for independent candidate Harry Flood Byrd (also supported by 15 "unpledged" Democratic delegates). Unlike other delegates who voted for Byrd for president, Irwin cast his vice-presidential electoral vote for Barry Goldwater.
- 1956 election: Alabama elector W. F. Turner, pledged for Democrats Adlai Stevenson and Estes Kefauver, cast his votes for Walter Burgwyn Jones and Herman Talmadge.
- 1948 election: Tennessee elector Preston Parks, pledged for Democrats Harry Truman and Alben Barkley, cast his votes for States' Rights Democratic Party candidates Strom Thurmond and Fielding Wright.
Electoral votes
There are a total of 538 electoral votes. Electoral votes for each state are determined decennially by the United States Census (see also United States Congressional Apportionment). For each state the number is two more than the number of Representatives that the state has in Congress. Thus the number of electoral votes per state is two plus a number proportional to the population, determined by the Method of Equal Proportions. The 23rd Amendment gives the District of Columbia the number of electoral votes that it would receive if it were a state, or the smallest number of electoral votes of any state, whichever is smaller. The electoral vote distribution for the 2004 and 2008 elections is as follows.
Alphabetically
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Alabama - 9 Alaska - 3 Arizona - 10 Arkansas - 6 California - 55 Colorado - 9 Connecticut - 7 D.C. - 3 Delaware - 3 Florida - 27 Georgia - 15 |
Hawaii - 4 Idaho - 4 Illinois - 21 Indiana - 11 Iowa - 7 Kansas - 6 Kentucky - 8 Louisiana - 9 Maine - 4 Maryland - 10 | Massachusetts - 12 Michigan - 17 Minnesota - 10 Mississippi - 6 Missouri - 11 Montana - 3 Nebraska - 5 Nevada - 5 New Hampshire - 4 New Jersey - 15 | New Mexico - 5 New York - 31 North Carolina - 15 North Dakota - 3 Ohio - 20 Oklahoma - 7 Oregon - 7 Pennsylvania - 21 Rhode Island - 4 South Carolina - 8 | South Dakota - 3 Tennessee - 11 Texas - 34 Utah - 5 Vermont - 3 Virginia - 13 Washington - 11 West Virginia - 5 Wisconsin - 10 Wyoming - 3 |
Numerically
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California - 55 |
Virginia - 13 |
Alabama - 9 |
Kansas - 6 |
New Hampshire - 4 |
See also
External links
- Electoral-Vote.comLATimes.com and ElectionProjection.com - Frequently updated visual state-by-state current electoral totals of the current (2004) election based on polling data.
- The Electoral College - by William C. Kimberling, Deputy Director FEC Office of Election Administration
- League of Women Voters - A web page from the League of Women Voters advocating direct election and the abolition of the electoral college
- The Electoral College Zine - A web site supporting retention of the Electoral College, including an article giving a mathematical analysis(See below)
- Math Against Tyranny - an article describing MIT researcher Alan Natapoff's analysis favoring the electoral college system
- Outcomes of Presidential Elections and the House Size - The Neubauer-Zeitlin analysis shows that the winner of the 2000 presidential election was determined in 1941 when the House size was fixed at 435. Had the House size been set at 500, then Gore would have won the 2000 election.
- US presidential electoral system - A mathematical analysis of the US presidential system, showing that this system is biased toward populous states, giving a citizen of California roughly four times more power than one of Montana in the choice of the US president.
- Electoral College Vote Calculator - A tool for determining which combinations of states a candidate can win to become President.
- Origin and History - shorter version of the origin and history of the US Electoral College.
- http://www.presidentelect.org/index.html
- http://unfutz.blogspot.com/2004/10/electoral-college-survey-1030.html