The Electoral College is the way people in the United States elect the President and Vice President. Voters do not directly elect the President and Vice President of the United States. Show Instead, the 538 electors in the Electoral College vote to determine the President and Vice President. The popular vote in presidential elections helps determine how each state’s electors will vote. Most states use a “winner-take-all” system, in which they award all of their Electoral College votes to the winner of the popular vote in that state. Maine and Nebraska use systems that allow multiple candidates to win electors within each state. A candidate must receive the votes of 270 electors to win. Each state and the District of Columbia is allocated a different number of electors based on its population. Each political party and state has its own process and procedures for determining who those electors are. What are the problems with the Electoral College? The Electoral College system means that the candidate who earns the most votes does not always win. It is possible to become President while earning fewer votes from citizens around the country than a rival candidate. This has happened five times in United States history. The current system focuses candidates’ attention on just a few states. The presidential general election votes are incredibly important in competitive, or “swing,” states, but not as important in other states, because all the electors will likely go to one candidate even if another wins a significant number of votes. As a result, presidential candidates focus their attention and energy on only a few states. The states — and their voters — that get ignored are big and small, Democratic and Republican, urban, suburban, and rural. Under the Electoral College, the importance of your vote in presidential general elections depends on where you live. If you happen to live in a swing state, your vote is very important. If you don’t, your vote — although still important and necessary — has less of an impact. What can we do to solve these problems? Where you live should not determine the importance of your vote in presidential general elections. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is an effort to make every eligible citizen’s vote matter in every presidential election. It would ensure that the winner of the national popular vote would be elected President. It is an agreement that has already been passed in 15 states and DC, which together represent 195 Electoral College votes. It will go into effect when it passes in states representing at least 270 Electoral College votes. If enacted, it would give all of each participating state’s Electoral College votes to the candidate who wins the nationwide popular vote. This would mean that the presidential candidate who earns the most total votes from citizens across the country would be elected President. If the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact passes, candidates would have to pay attention to all issues that matter to all voters. Candidates would not be able to focus on just a few states and a few issues like they do now. They would have to work to earn the votes of citizens all over the country. They could not afford to ignore those in states that are currently not competitive. California, Colorado, Connecticut, DC, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington have joined the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. If you live in a state that hasn’t yet joined, you should contact your governor and state legislators to tell them to pass it. Tell them that you think the votes of all Americans should count equally in determining the President. If you live somewhere that has entered the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, you can encourage family or friends in other states to contact their representatives about the Compact. A history professor shares his insights on the governmental institution that has increasingly become the deciding factor in American presidential races. By Steve Neumann The 2020 presidential election is fast approaching, which means it’s the perfect time for a refresher on the governmental institution that has increasingly become the deciding factor in American presidential races: the Electoral College. We asked Chris DeRosa, Ph.D., chair of the Department of History and Anthropology, to share his insights on the institution. THE PURPOSEThe original plan called for each elector to cast two votes for president. Whoever received a majority of votes from electors became president; the runner-up became vice president. States can do what they want with their electoral votes, says DeRosa. Most give them to the candidate who wins a state majority. An elector who defies that assignment is called a faithless elector, and the state has the choice whether to tolerate them. “You don’t get them very often because they’re chosen as party loyalists, and we’ve never had faithless electors swing an election,” says DeRosa. THE GOODOne of the advantages is the end result is clear: “Somebody wins; somebody gets a majority of the electoral votes,” says DeRosa. If presidents were elected purely by popular vote, a candidate could win the presidency with less than 50% of the vote. “If you had more than two parties contending for the presidency, you might have somebody winning with 30% of the votes, and that’s a ticket to an extremist candidate.” THE BADThe first problem with the Electoral College is that it gives more weight to voters in small states than those in more populous ones, says DeRosa. Every state gets a minimum of three electoral votes. However, each state’s total allotment is based on its representation in the Senate (always two people) and the House (varies by population). “So take Washington, D.C., as an example,” says DeRosa. “More people live in D.C. than in Wyoming, the least populous state in the union; but they both get three electoral votes.” (Plus, unlike Wyoming, D.C. gets no voting representation in Congress.) THE UGLYThe biggest problem with the Electoral College is that it encourages vote suppression, says DeRosa. Southern states always had an advantage in the population count, because they got electoral votes appointed on the basis of their slave populations and their white populations. That gave the states extra representation for people they weren’t really representing at all. After the Civil War, former slaves were counted as “whole” persons, not three-fifths of one, for purposes of electoral vote allotment. But Black voter suppression still took place through Jim Crow laws. This further “inflated the electoral count of people who were not representing all the people in their state,” says DeRosa. “So the Electoral College became a pillar of white supremacy.” THE FUTURELove it or hate it, the Electoral College is here to stay because changing it would require “constitutional surgery,” says DeRosa. “You would need three-fourths of the states to ratify any change, and too many states that are intent on suppressing votes benefit from the Electoral College.” The downside? “If you never have to appeal to the electorate because you’re successfully suppressing some large part of it, then you have a broken system.” What impact can the Electoral College system have on presidential elections quizlet?Electoral College - Representatives chosen in each state use the popular vote to determine who will receive the electoral votes (the winner in each state receives all of its electoral votes). This determines who becomes President-elect.
What is the role of the Electoral College in presidential elections?The Electoral College is how we refer to the process by which the United States elects the President, even though that term does not appear in the U.S. Constitution. In this process, the States (which includes the District of Columbia just for this process) elect the President and Vice President.
How does the Electoral College shape the presidential election quizlet?Initially, in the electoral college, electors vote for president. Each elector votes for two persons. The person with the greatest number (must be a majority) of votes won the presidency; the person with the second most votes became the vice president.
What is the role and importance of the Electoral College?The Electoral College is the process we use to elect the U.S. president. Established in the U.S. Constitution, its purpose is to spread the power to elect the president across all 50 states. It was designed to ensure that the more populous states didn't overpower the smaller states when choosing the nation's leader.
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