United States presidential election

The United States presidential election is a process held every four years during which American citizens select the leader of the United States. The election is an indirect election in that voters do not cast ballots for a presidential candidate. They instead vote for a presidential elector, a person selected by his or her state, who will in turn officially vote for the president and vice president. The number of electors is tied to each state's representation in Congress; together they make up the Electoral College, a group that has been set at 538 electors since the late twentieth century. For a candidate to be elected president, he or she must receive a majority of the electoral votes—270 or more. The system grew out of a compromise by the Founding Fathers, and several times has resulted in a president winning the electoral vote while losing the popular vote.

Background

After the American colonies won their independence from Great Britain in the Revolutionary War, their leaders began the task of establishing a government. During the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the Founding Fathers were at odds about how the United States should choose a new leader. They proposed three methods of electing a chief executive—majority vote of the population, a vote in Congress, and a vote by state governors. States with smaller populations were opposed to a popular vote because they believed it would give larger states too much influence. In the end, a compromise was reached creating the electoral system.

Under the original system, each state was granted presidential electors equal to the number of representatives it sent to the US House plus two electors corresponding to its two senators. The electors met to cast two votes each for president. The candidate winning the majority of electoral votes was chosen as president and the runner-up as vice president. If no candidate received a majority of the vote, the House of Representatives would decide the election. Each state was given the freedom to choose its electors as it saw fit.

Overview

Revolutionary War hero George Washington ran unopposed in the first presidential election in 1789. He received a vote from all sixty-nine electors, making him the only unanimously elected president in US history. New York did not choose electors and North Carolina and Rhode Island had not yet ratified the Constitution, so only ten of the thirteen states participated. John Adams finished with thirty-five votes and was named vice president.

The election of 1800 ended in a seventy-three-vote tie between Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson. After a contentious battle, the House awarded the presidency to Jefferson, but the election revealed a fundamental flaw in the original electoral system. Four years later, the Twelfth Amendment ended the practice of casting two votes for president and gave each elector one vote for president and one vote for vice president.

Since each state was allowed to make its own laws in regards to electors, more than half the states in the early years of the nation bypassed the popular vote altogether and chose their electors by a vote in state legislatures. As the century wore on, more states changed their laws and tied their electors to the candidate chosen by the state's popular vote. Since the late nineteenth century, all states except for Maine and Nebraska have awarded their electoral votes in this manner. Maine and Nebraska award their votes on a proportional system, which could result in those states giving votes to more than one candidate.

The national presidential election is held every four years on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November; however, the votes counted on election night are technically not the final result. The electors gather in mid-December in their respective state capitals to officially cast their ballots for president and vice president. The votes are endorsed and sent to Congress for counting and final certification. On rare occasions, individual electors have chosen not to honor the commitment to vote for the candidate their state chose. Even though the US Constitution allows these so-called "faithless" electors to cast their ballot for another candidate, historically, very few have done so. The few times it has happened did not significantly affect the election result.

Since Alaska and Hawaii were granted statehood in 1959 and the District of Columbia was awarded three electoral votes in 1961, the Electoral College has been set at 538 electors. To gain a majority of the vote and win the presidency, a candidate must receive 270 electoral votes. In the 2016 election, California had the most electoral votes with fifty-five, Texas was second with thirty-six, and New York and Florida both had twenty-nine. Several states had the least amount possible with three. The largest margin of victory in a presidential race occurred in 1936 when Franklin Roosevelt defeated Alfred Landon 523-8 in the Electoral College. Ronald Reagan received the most electoral votes in history when he captured 525 on his way to winning re-election in 1984.

Four times in the history of the United States, a candidate has won the popular vote but lost the presidency in the electoral vote. In 1876, Samuel Tilden garnered 200,000 more popular votes than Rutherford B. Hayes but fell short by a single electoral vote. Benjamin Harrison easily won the electoral vote in 1888 despite receiving fewer popular votes than incumbent Grover Cleveland. In a highly contested race in 2000, George W. Bush won the presidency with 271 electoral votes to 266 for Al Gore. Gore captured the popular vote by a margin of about 540,000. In 2016, Donald Trump was elected president with 304 electoral votes while Hillary Clinton finished with almost three million more popular votes.

In 1824, Andrew Jackson won both the popular vote and the electoral vote but finished short of the majority needed to win outright. In a four-way race, Jackson finished with ninety-nine electoral votes to runner-up John Quincy Adams' eighty-four. The election was sent to the House of Representatives where one of the four candidates, Henry Clay, was also Speaker of the House. Amid charges of corruption and backroom dealing, Clay gave his support to Adams, swaying the House vote and giving Adams the presidency.

Bibliography

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