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The Electoral College is an important body in American politics which determines the outcome of presidential elections. It is made up of 538 presidential electors, and a simple majority of 270 votes is needed to elect the president and vice president. The number of electors of a state is calculated by adding the number of representatives in the House of Representatives from their state, and the number of senators they have, which is always 2. For example, the state of California has 52 representatives, and 2 senators, so they have 54 electors allocated to them. Electors represent their state and vote for the corresponding presidential candidate that wins a majority in their state. All states, except for Maine and Nebraska, use the party block voting system, which means that all the electors of the state will vote for the winning candidate. Using California again as an example, if a Democratic presidential candidate wins the vote, all 52 of the electors will vote for that presidential candidate. However, for Maine and Nebraska, their states are split into congressional districts, which are administrative regions which represent smaller divisions of a region. Instead, they choose one elector for each congressional district, and allocate two electors for the district with the highest number of votes.
The Electoral College was created in 1787, despite not explicitly being stated in the constitution, with there only being ‘electors’ instead. The 12th Amendment further ratified and set out the rules which a presidential candidate needs to meet in order to get elected most importantly that winner had to secure a simple majority from the Electoral College to win the election. Moreover, if no candidate meets a majority, the House of Representatives becomes responsible to elect a President, and the Senate to elect a Vice President. This amendment is important as it specifically uses the term ‘Electoral College’, making the body constitutionally binding and legalised. Most scholars argue that the Electoral College was created out of the Founding Fathers’ fear of mass democracy, as this body can reduce the influence of the people in deciding their representatives.
Check out this TED-Ed presentation on some of the most common criticisms of the Electoral College
The College is fairly controversial due to its high potential impact on the results of an election. The biggest potential drawback is how due to the mechanism of calculating electors work, there is a chance that an elect president may not win the popular vote, but still won the vote at the Electoral College. This has happened four times (1876. 1888, 2000 and 2016); the most recent one being in 2016, where Trump did not win the popular vote, but won the electoral college vote and went on to become president. When this happened in 2000, this triggered the famous Supreme Court case Bush v Gore, where the conservative-leaning Supreme Court’s decision allowed for Bush to become president. This US, like the UK, uses the First Past the Post System, which is a majoritarian, disproportionate mechanism, as it uses a winner-takes-all system. The disparity between the popular and electoral college vote can have major effects, as this means the president is not democratically elected, and does not reflect the will of the people, which could cause major questions with how democratic the country really is. There are other minor issues with the Electoral College, such as the phenomenon of rogue electors, which occurs when an elector does not vote for their assigned candidate, and either abstains or votes for the other candidate. This again draws up problems of a lack of democracy in the election process, as electors are able to not follow their allocation and represent their state. However, their effects are far less significant compared to the disparity between the Electoral College and the popular vote, as no rogue elector has affected the outcome of an election. Moreover, due to the additional 2 electors from the Senate, some argue that smaller states are overrepresented, distorting democratic representation. For example, Wyoming, the smallest state, has 3 electors; if California’s electors were proportional, they would have double or even triple the amount of electors they have now.
Due to the backlash surrounding the system, there have been some calls to amend the body by increasing the proportionality of electors, penalising rogue electors, or to remove the Electoral College entirely. However, this is difficult in practice, due to the entrenched nature of the constitution, and how difficult it is to amend it. Moreover, if the Electoral College results benefit the president, such as Trump’s victory in 2016, then they are also not in a hurry to change it. All these factors make it so that it is difficult to change or even remove the Electoral College, so it is likely to still remain a crucial part of American elections.
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