I admit I have a difficult time picturing the mechanics of the Electoral College. Do the Electors get to decide how to vote? If it’s predetermined by a majority of the population in most states, why do we need Electors at all? Can’t someone just do the math according to the rules of the Electoral College and call it a day?
Has an Elector ever voted contrary to what they are supposed to? What happens then? Where do the Electors come from - how do they get the job? Why don’t we know their names? Do they all assemble in one big room in each state and watch the election returns?
Theoretically yes, although they rarely go against what they’re expected to do.
The Constitution gives each state the right to choose its Electors however it wants. The idea of the people voting for Electors is fairly new. Originally, they were appointed by state legislatures or other means. Not all states simply choose Electors based on the majority votes, though. Maine and Nebraska have a semi-proportional system where Electors are chosen for each congressional district, and two are chosen for the winner of the state as a whole. Colorado is having a referendum on setting up a fully proportional system for choosing Electors.
Yes, a few times. Usually they switch their votes for President and Vice President as a protest. One Elector from DC abstained to protest DC’s lack of Congressional representation. One Republican Elector voted for the Libertarian candidates (the first and only time a Lib has received an electoral vote, and the first and only electoral vote for a woman.)
Some states have laws saying that “unfaithful” electors can be fined or punished, but the constitutionality of these laws has never been tested.
They are chosen by the state party committees. In some states they are nominated at the party conventions, in others, the position is given to long-time party workers as recognition of their service. State-level elected officials (but no Senators or Representatives) can also be Electors.
We know their names. It’s public information.
No, however, the Electors who win all assemble in one big room in their state’s capitol in order to officially cast their votes.
Nothing. Some states have “faithless elector” laws, but as far as I know, no one has ever been prosecuted under them.
They’re nominated by their party, and they get elected on Election Day. When you vote for president, you’re not voting for the presidential candidate, you are voting for an elector or a slate of electors.
Some states have their names on the ballot, some don’t. You could easily find out by calling the party organization in your state.
They don’t meet till later, in December sometime that I can’t remember off the top of my head. In Colorado, they meet in a room at the state Capitol.
Someone could do the math and call it a day. However I look at it this way, if a state gets 5 votes then someone has to get up and say our 5 votes goes to whoever. Considering that electors occasionally do vote against what they are supposed to I would rather have 5 people holding those 5 votes intead of one.
With two states (and possibly three depending what happens in Colorado) divvying up their electoral votes in other than winner-take-all fashion, how is it determined which Elector will vote for which candidate? I realize it’s never happened, but say it does this time around in Maine, with 4 EVs. Say Kerry gets three and Bush gets 1; which elector would vote for Bush, how would it be determined and how would it be enforced?
I’ve got to assume that in Maine and Nebraska, a candidate for elector is specifically assigned to a congressional district, and two are assigned for statewide. If the measure passes here, I don’t have any clue how that’s going to work.
That’s a nice cynical answer, but not terribly accurate and not very appropriate for GQ. The electoral college is a representative democracy exactly like our legislature. Using elected representatives instead of direct popular vote has some advantages, and it hardly results in completely deferring the decision to someone else. I think some reform is in order, but it’s a difficult issue because there are a lot of advantages to the current system. For example, a direct popular vote would allow the campaigns to focus on (and pander to) urban population centers while ignoring rural issues. A winner-take-all electoral college system gives small rural states a disproportionate vote which forces the candidates to at least acknowledge them. There are pros and cons to every system, but I hardly think you can make the case that the current system is as undemocratic as your comment makes it out to be.
First, as has been discussed in the past, they were originally intended to protect the smaller states (in terms of population) from being overwhelmed by the most populous states, by weighting their votes a bit higher thanks to the minimum-three-electors rule. Whether this remains valuable is Greatly Debatable – and has been.
Second, while the issue of “faithless electors” has occurred occasionally, what we are doing is selecting a slate of men pledged to cast their electoral votes for Messrs. Bush and Cheney or Messrs. Kerry and Edwards (or, theoretically, other tickets, like the Libertarian and Naderite). And that is what, under normal circumstances, they will do.
But contemplate if on November 8, GWB keels over dead with a massive heart attack. Obviously, Dick Cheney becomes President under the Constitutional provisions, serving out the period November 8, 2004-January 20, 2005.
However, without the electoral college, the question of what happens to “the votes cast for the Bush-Cheney” ticket would be the subject of complex legal-political disputes beside which the 2000 election furore would pale into a gentle zephyr.
But with the electoral college, the Republican electors will simply decide for whom to cast their votes in view of Mr. Bush’s untimely demise – presumably but not necessarily Mr. Cheney – and the country will lurch on in its inimitable fashion.
If I recall correctly, the other stated purpose of Electors is to provide one last check and balance. If the electorate totally flipped its lid and elected a David Duke or an Al Sharpton, the electors could collectively say, “we’re not voting for this turkey!”, thereby saving the country’s ass.
However, no matter how scummy a person, it’s hard to imagine the bulk of the electors not following the vote.
I think (perhaps the OP can correct me if I’m wrong) that some of the replies have misunderstood the question.
The concept of electoral votes (vs. simple popular vote) does not inherently require that these votes be cast by living, breathing humans with the ability to be “faithless.” These are two separate concepts, IMO.
Could the constitution be amended to eliminate the human electors while retaining all other trappings of the electoral college (certain number of electoral votes for each state, allocated to a degree as that state sees fit, plurality of E.V.'s wins the election)?
Yes, of course. Eliminating human electors need not require going to a direct popular vote.
As I read the OP, this is the situation being suggested by the question “Can’t someone just do the math according to the rules of the Electoral College and call it a day?”
The electors of the Electoral College meet in their respective states on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December (which this year is December 13). More on the procedure here.
jayjay: Easy. From now on the Holy Roman Emperor will be the oldest male heir of the august House of Hapsburg. That’s pretty much how they actually decided it. I’m not sure why they had electors; it’s not like it was necessary to maintain some air of democracy then. It may have been for the same reason that has often been suggested as the inspiration for the US Electoral College: that’s how they choose the Pope, so that’s how we’ll choose the President/Holy Roman Emperor.
One of the advantages of using the electoral college system is that it requires the winning candidate to have some level of support across all states. A candidate who is wildly popular in a few states but has little support in others cannot win enough electoral votes to become President. For example, a candidate who had 80% of the popular vote in the South but only 5% in the rest of the country couldn’t become President. Opponents to this view may say that it ensures that the winning candidate will always be either Democratic or Republican since no other party has broad nationwide support.
In practice, it doesn’t appear that the candidates this year are giving equal, or even proportionate attention to each state. The electoral college system means that a candidate can focus less attention on states where they are assured well over or under 50% of the popular vote. Most of the attention is being focused on ‘swing’ or ‘battleground’ states with a nearly evenly-divided electorate, because those states (particularly those with a large number of electoral votes, such as Ohio and Florida) will determine the outcome of the election.
In fact, I’d recommend we all got to the atlas and look up 1968 for a graphic look at everything about the EC that works.
A wildly popular candidate carried a few states and denied either of the two major candidates a majority of the popular vote. In fact, the margin between the two candidates was only .7%. Yet, no crisis over who would become President (that crisis came later.)
Not quite true. The 1984 Democrat vice-presidential candidate, Geraldine Ferraro, received 13 electoral votes.
The Repbulican bolter was Rodger MacBride in Virginia. In the 1972 election, between Nixon’s victory in November and the Electoral College’s meeting in December, Nixon started talking about wage and price controls. This incensed MacBride so much, he refused to cast his Electoral College vote for Nixon and instead, voted for John Hospers and Toni Nathan, the Libertarian party’s first candidates who were on the ballot in exactly two states.
According to my almanac, there’ve been a couple other “faithless” electors since 1972. In 1976, one voter from Washington state voted for Reagan and in 1988, one voter from WV voted for Lloyd Bentsen, the VP candidate, for president.
Naturally there are arguments against the electoral college but to my mind this shows the concept is not as bizzare or clearly wrong as it may seem to the “50.1% wins” crowd.