Electoral College: Overview

Introduction

Before the controversial 2000 presidential election focused a spotlight on the Electoral College, many people both within the United States and abroad remained unaware that the US president is not elected directly by the people. American voters cast their ballots instead for slates of electors from all fifty states plus the District of Columbia.

The number of electoral votes belonging to each state equals the number of its members in the Senate and the House of Representatives. Each state has two senators while the size of the House of Representatives is limited to 435. Therefore, including the District of Columbia’s three votes, the total number of electoral votes available in a presidential election is 538, with victory going to that candidate who amasses a majority of 270.

Such a system allows for the possibility, in a very tight contest, of the election of a president who manages to win 270 electoral votes while losing the nationwide popular vote to their opponent. Although rare, this has occurred five times: in 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016. The contentious 2000 election of Republican George W. Bush under these circumstances renewed a long-simmering debate over whether the Electoral College represents an outdated and undemocratic method of choosing a president or a critical safeguard against ineffective governance by a plurality leader. Criticism of the system ramped up again in 2016 after Republican Donald Trump won the presidency, despite losing the popular vote by a considerable margin to Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Critics of the Electoral College argue that it unfairly exaggerates the political influence of sparsely populated states occupied heavily by rural, White voters while effectively decreasing the value of votes cast in heavily populated states characterized by urban, racially diverse voters. Such a system, critics contend, runs counter to the democratic principle of one-person, one-vote, and can thwart the popular will of the nation.

Supporters of the Electoral College argue that a straightforward popular election would encourage the candidacies of independents and representatives of parties outside of the American political mainstream. This could result, they fear, in the even more frequent election of a plurality president. Such an outcome, critics worry, would undermine the efficiency that has traditionally characterized American two-party governance, and lead instead to the paralysis and instability that have plagued governing coalitions in some parliamentary-style democracies abroad.

Understanding the Discussion

Constitutional amendment: The result of a difficult process to change the US Constitution. A proposed amendment must pass both houses of Congress by a two-thirds majority in each, before going on to the states for approval by at least three-fourths of the whole. Alternatively, a constitutional convention can be called by two-thirds of the legislatures of the states and any amendment proposed at that convention is then sent to the states to be approved by three-fourths of the legislatures or conventions (this mechanism has never been used). Regardless of how it is proposed, an amendment must be ratified by three-fourths of the fifty states to become law.

Disenfranchised: Historically deprived of the rights of citizenship, especially the right to vote.

Electoral College: A body of electors chosen to elect the president and vice president of the United States. Each of the fifty states has a number of electors equivalent to its total congressional representation. Since 1961, the District of Columbia has also had three electors under the terms of the Twenty-Third Amendment to the Constitution. Each state determines how electors are selected.

Plurality: The number by which the vote of the winning choice in a contest exceeds that of the closest opponent, but is not a majority.

Parliamentary democracy: A political system in which the legislature (parliament) selects the government (a prime minister, premier, or chancellor along with the cabinet ministers) according to party strength as expressed in elections.

History

When the framers of the Constitution established the Electoral College as a mechanism for electing presidents, the two-party system that has since come to dominate American politics did not exist. In the absence of Republicans and Democrats or similar entities, the Founders clearly anticipated that each presidential election would feature multiple candidates, each with a realistic chance of winning.

They were sufficiently concerned about the possibility that, in any given election, no one candidate would succeed in winning an electoral majority that they designed a default mechanism: in those circumstances, the House of Representatives would choose the president from among the five leading candidates, with each state entitled to only one vote.

The Founders’ vision, however, did not play out as the framers had intended. Political parties, capable of galvanizing national support for their candidates, came to wield such clout that a victory by an independent candidate quickly became theoretically possible but practically impossible.

Also at the heart of the decision to enshrine the Electoral College into the Constitution was a deeply held conviction that the ‘ordinary run’ of people were incapable of making sound political choices. Alexander Hamilton, one of the authors of the Federalist Papers, argued that average citizens could seldom make a right decision, as they were swayed by immediate events, not the long-term good. As with the indirect election of US senators (changed in 1913 by the 16th Amendment), the Electoral College served as a means of diluting direct democracy. That antidemocratic history also drives some of the animosity toward the Electoral College today. This history was reinforced in Bush v. Gore (2000) when Justice Scalia pointed out there is no constitutional guarantee for citizens to play any role in selecting electors.

As the democratic process evolved to extend voting rights to the historically disenfranchised (women, Black Americans, the impoverished, and citizens as young as eighteen years old), the newly diverse voting public demanded increased accountability. Today, electors in all fifty states are chosen by popular vote and many states have laws requiring electors to honor their pledges. Although not constitutionally bound to do so, electors from all over the country have traditionally cast their ballots in conformity with the voters’ choice. (So-called faithless electors have never been sanctioned for departing from their pledges, however.)

Over the past two centuries, hundreds of proposed amendments to reform or abolish the Electoral College have been introduced in Congress. Unwilling to yield the disproportionate political influence that the Electoral College system gives them, smaller states have successfully blocked all attempts to amend the Constitution.

In the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election of George W. Bush, critics renewed their demands for a constitutional amendment that would repeal the Electoral College and make the election of a president contingent upon a plurality of the nationwide popular vote. The controversy arose in part from the reality that, in 2000, more than half of the total US population resided in just ten states. Voters living in the seven least populous states, those that elect only one member to the House of Representatives but are also entitled to two additional electoral votes because every state has two senators, saw their ballots carry, in proportion to their state population, triple the weight of ballots cast in more populous states.

Although critics have historically made appeals to reform or abolish the Electoral College many times, the extraordinary bitterness and confusion of the 2000 election, which was ultimately decided by the Supreme Court more than a month after Election Day, brought a new urgency to a question that had remained largely academic until that point. The debate over the Electoral College became part of a nationwide public dialogue, as well as the concern of legal scholars.

Following the 2010 census, House seats were reapportioned, as is the custom after every decennial census. Population increases in the southern part of the country led to seven states in the region gaining representatives. Texas was allotted four more seats in the House—bringing its total House seats to thirty-six, and its electoral value to thirty-eight votes—while Florida saw a gain of two seats. Northern states did not fare as well. Both New York and Ohio lost two seats/electoral votes. Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Massachusetts were among ten states, most in the Northeast or Midwest, that lost electoral votes after the 2010 census.

Some critics, recognizing the long history of failed attempts at repeal or reform, called for presidential candidates to bypass the system by publicly pledging to abide by the popular vote. Even if candidates were willing to take such a pledge, however, and neither the 2004 nor the 2008 presidential elections gave any indication that this was a possibility, such a pledge would face difficult legal hurdles as it would violate an election requirement specifically outlined in the Constitution.

The US presidential election of 2016 brought renewed attention to the debate after a result similar to that of 2000. Democrat Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a tally of nearly three million, but Republican Donald Trump won the presidency by narrowly taking several key swing states. At the final count, Trump had 306 electoral votes to Clinton's 232. This outcome, widely seen as a shocking upset, led to more calls to end the Electoral College, including from prominent voices such as Senator Barbara Boxer. Critics noted that in both 2000 and 2016, the Republican candidate won thanks to the electoral votes of largely rural areas, overcoming majorities concentrated in cities and along the coasts. They argued again that the Electoral College was an outdated system out of step with contemporary society, and that even its goal of avoiding populist, extremist presidents had clearly failed with the election of the controversial Trump. Trump himself publicly criticized the Electoral College before the election but praised it in the wake of his victory.

While some Democrats openly called for electors to break with their states and deny Trump the presidency, he was indeed confirmed by the Electoral College. However, dissatisfaction with the system was seen with a record seven electors breaking from their pledged candidate. Two faithless electors pledged to Trump voted otherwise, giving him 304 official votes, while five electors pledged to Clinton voted otherwise to protest the system, giving her 227 official votes.

The 2020 presidential campaign again added to the Electoral College debate, with at least eight Democratic hopefuls having spoken out against it by May 2019. The debate was further heightened after the 2020 election, when Trump and his supporters made false and misleading claims of voter fraud and refused to concede the presidential election to Joe Biden, despite Biden's lead in the Electoral College, as well as the popular vote. On January 6, 2021, five people died when violent right-wing supporters of Trump attacked the Capitol building while both houses of Congress were in the process of certifying the 2020 Electoral College votes. Though one hundred House Republicans and six Republican senators objected to the election results in Arizona and Pennsylvania, Congress completed the certification process on January 7. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were sworn into office on January 20, 2021.

The Electoral College Today

In the wake of the January 6, 2021, insurrection on the Capitol, the Justice Department and a designated House select committee launched investigations into the incident. By mid-2022, both investigations had involved increasingly wide-ranging issues of subpoenas and testimony, with the House select committee holding a series of hearings. In September 2022, it was announced that federal agents had received court authorization to seize the cell phones belonging to two people involved with Trump's legal and campaign teams who were believed to have played a part in naming Trump-pledged electors to interfere with the election certification; earlier in the year, the House committee had issued subpoenas to several individuals accused of fraudulently claiming to be Trump electors. Also in September, the House voted to pass an electoral reform bill that aimed to significantly alter the Electoral Count Act stipulating Electoral College vote submission and counting processes. Among the reforms proposed by the bill were a provision emphasizing the solely ministerial nature of the vice president's role in the ballot counting and one imposing a greater limit on congressional ability for objection considerations.

Meanwhile, the debate over the Electoral College continued into the 2020s. Those in favor of abolishing the system contend that it is an outdated and racist design that was intended to balance the power of slaveholding and free states and that it gives rural states undue influence over the outcome. Some critics say it encourages candidates to campaign most in and adopt the concerns of traditional battleground states, dissuading and effectively disenfranchising voters in other states.

Electoral College supporters argue that because of it, presidential candidates have had to consider the needs of a broader geographical area than they otherwise might, and that majority rule could have chilling effects on the minority voice and needs. They also say that direct popular votes could lead to more recounts (because of fraud or narrow margins), to more provincialism, and to further polarization as candidates ignore moderates. A different argument in favor of the status quo is that the supposed advantage of Republican-leaning rural states is often canceled out by Democratic-leaning small states and thus there is no real skew.

One alternative to abolition of the Electoral College that took off in the early twenty-first century was the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, in which members pledge all their electoral votes to the national winner of the popular vote rather than the candidate that won their jurisdiction. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, by 2024 seventeen states and the District of Columbia had signed on, representing 209 electoral votes, but the compact would only become effective should states totaling 270 electoral votes join. Advocates of a national popular vote, whether through constitutional amendment or compact, argue that a direct vote would broaden campaigning, increase voter participation, and lessen the chances of extreme gerrymandering that other alternatives might engender. A Pew Research Center poll released in September 2024 found that 63 percent of US adults supported changing the method of the president's election to the nationwide popular vote, while 35 percent wanted to maintain the Electoral College system. Other reform proposals have included states splitting their electoral votes proportionally among candidates, as Maine and Nebraska do, or counting only states' number of US representatives, not their senators, in an effort to rebalance the influence of small and rural states.

These essays and any opinions, information, or representations contained therein are the creation of the particular author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of EBSCO Information Services.

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