The Electoral College Primer: How it Works

In my many ill-advised political conversations with people sitting around while sharing beers and such, it occurs to me that most Americans don't really understand how our highest leaders are actually elected. While most recognize the term, "Electoral College," perhaps only a small percentage know what it is or how it works (and even fewer know why the system was created). If you have a good understanding of the electoral system, feel free to skip this post; this post is designed to help folks (who either aren't aware, or who have forgotten how the process works) brush up on their knowledge of how we actually pick our president and vice president. Butt and ReButt debates are the wrong place to engage in complex educational essays, but a little bit of explanation of the system seems in order. Toward that end, I will explain how we vote for our leaders, but for a history of the Electoral College system and it's pros and cons, you'll need to read Dano's and Reed's debate.

For those of you who are legal and/or political scholars, simplicity and clarity dictate that the explanation that follows may be oversimplified and even slightly incorrect (though, not substantively). Please don't make unimportant correction comments to this post.

After reading this entry, it is hoped that some participants can then better enjoy and understand our debate posts for this week, "should we scrap the Electoral College system in favor of one that relies strictly on the popular vote?"

How We Vote for President and Vice President

When we vote for the president and vice president of the U.S., we are not actually voting for the candidates; we are voting for the group of people appointed within our respective states to represent us in the national election. These people, selected by varied methods from state to state, are collectively known as "electors," and, taken together, are known as the "Electoral College" (though this term is not found in the Constitution). Each state has as many electors as they have representatives and senators in the U.S. Congress. All told, there are 538 members of the Electoral College (equal to the 535 members of Congress plus three for the District of Columbia).

In many states, the electors are required by state law to vote according to the outcome of the popular vote within the state. In other words, if the majority of the popular vote favors the Republican candidate, the electors would be required to cast all of the state's electoral votes for the Republican candidate. In some other states, this loyalty to the public is not required, but history shows that there have been very few instances of "faithless electors," as those who vote contrary to the loyalty promise are known. Two states, Nebraska and Maine, stand alone in their choice to select electors largely by Congressional districts, such that the respective Democratic and Republican candidates can both gain a portion of the electoral votes in these two states.

So, the long and short of it is that on election day, each state tallies up the popular votes within the state and, ideally, the state's electors agree to cast the state's votes according to the public majority. Within Florida, for example, if the Democratic candidate gets 51% of the popular vote of Floridians, the state's electors would certify that Florida voted for the Democratic candidate. Each state, in turn, sends their state's electoral vote tallies to the U.S. Congress, which officially counts them in December of each election year, and certifies the winners. Winners must have gotten a simple majority of the total collective electoral votes -- 270 electoral votes out of the total of 538. In the unlikely case of an electoral vote tie, complex provisions require that Congress make the final decision.

Hope that helps. On to the debate posts, now!

Reed: Electoral College has Outlived its Usefulness

Hi, folks, and welcome back. Let me begin by asking you to please spread the word that Butt and ReButt is back, and we want to be a strong force for reasonable, intelligent discussion and debate. So if your friends are not reasonable and intelligent, well......

At any rate, our topic this week regards the Electoral College. I won't do a John McCain here and say, "I bet you've never heard of that" because I know you have. And Dano has given us a very good primer on the history of the college, so I will argue, based on our coin toss, why the Electoral College is not only no longer necessary, but actually detrimental to our democratic process, and should be replaced by a national popular vote.

My grandmother, God rest her soul, loved Richard Nixon because she believed he had "an honest face." I'm confident not many who remember that heavy brow and five-o'clock shadow would agree. But beauty, talent and ability are indeed in the eyes of the beholder - in the case of presidential candidates, the voter. But voters in America, since Article II, Section One of the Constitution was adopted, have been casting their ballots not for president, but for electors.

That system was developed based on a variety of problems faced by the Founding Fathers (note: there were no founding mothers.) According to William Kimberling, a Deputy Director of the Federal Election Commission Office of Election Administration, the founders were dealing with a nation that:

• was composed of thirteen large and small states jealous of their own rights and powers and suspicious of any central national government,
  


• contained only 4 million people spread up and down a thousand miles of Atlantic seaboard barely connected by transportation or communication (so that national campaigns were impractical even if they had been thought desirable),
  


• believed, based on the influence of such British political thinkers as Henry St. John Bolingbroke, that political parties were mischievous if not downright evil, and
  


• felt that "gentlemen" should not campaign for public office (The saying was, "The office should seek the man, the man should not seek the office.") (Please note the web site of Federal Election Commission).
  

In the late 18th century, these might have been valid arguments for creating such a system as the Electoral College. But those arguments carry no validity today and for that reason, the system as it stands should be abolished.

This is not to say that individual states no longer jealously guard their rights. Citizens of each state own the right to elect their local and state leaders, and choose who they send to represent them on the national level in Congress. But, were it not applicable prior to 1865, certainly the outcome of the Civil War demonstrated that the union of the American states, and the federal government elected to represent that union, was and is the engine that drives our standing in a world that grows smaller every day.

We are now connected, by transportation and communication, not only between village and city, but state to state and nation to nation. Our population is no longer waiting in anticipation for the elite, more educated leaders of the community to report back from the halls of government as to what is best for our nation. Citizens, on an individual basis, are now expected to not only know what is happening within those halls, but to control them through the exercise of selecting our representatives in all branches of government.

Not only that, but federal law now trumps state law in almost every conceivable situation in which the two might clash. Therefore, each American deserves an equal say in who represents him or her on a national level. And the design of the Electoral College prevents this equality.

Consider the following: Activists and campaign volunteers, both Republican and Democrat, have stressed to potential voters that, no matter what your status in life, your vote counts just as much as that of anyone else. Were it only true. But based on the 2000 Census, and the Electoral College's allocation based on population, an individual voter in Wyoming carries approximately four times as much weight as a voter in California. This makes one wonder what is really the value in the concept of "one person, one vote."

The answer is, where presidential elections are concerned, the concept is false. Our current election race offers a prime example. Michigan, considered a "swing state" due to its high population, has been "written off" by the McCain campaign because, based on the opinion of McCain's handlers and the media pundits, Michigan is "unwinnable." So Senator McCain has pulled all of his campaign staff from Michigan to concentrate on other "swing states" such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida.

In other words, the voters of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida will decide the presidential election for the entire country, and the voters of Michigan have now been informed that, for all intents and purposes, their votes don't matter and they can stay home. More importantly, the pundits will be calling the election before the polls even close in our nation's most populous state, thus rendering California's citizens' votes meaningless, since the Republicans will have conceded that state based on its electors' Democratic tendencies.

There have been many anomalies in Presidential elections throughout our history, most of which would have been avoided through a true popular vote. In 1836, one party, the Whigs, ran three different candidates in three separate sections of the country. The purpose was to ensure a Whig majority in the Electoral College by appealing to the particular desires of each demographic. The plan was foiled when the electors chose Democratic-Republican candidate Martin Van Buren by absolute majority - but the electors themselves found Van Buren's Vice-Presidential candidate so objectionable that they failed to vote for him. Thus it was left to the Senate to make the determination, and it chose Richard Johnson, the running mate, as Vice President.

The means through which our electors vote today do not necessarily preclude such a bizarre scenario from reoccurring. It is possible that an Electoral College could select Barack Obama, but refuse to recognize Joe Biden, thus turning the election of a Vice-President to the Senate. Such a scenario would certainly render the President impotent, because in our party system (which the founders were trying to avoid), the candidate's first and most telling decision is that of a running mate.

There are a number of reasons to believe that this system should be scrapped, but the most important is its inability to accurately reflect the will of the American people. This argument was made by Republicans in 1992 when the party noted that Bill Clinton did not win a majority of the popular vote, but was a clear winner in the Electoral College. And it is true he did not win the majority of votes - but he won more popular votes than either George H.W. Bush or Ross Perot, thus claiming a clear victory under the most "democratic" of principles.

The 2000 election also produced a winner who did not garnish the majority of the popular vote. The contrast, and the most telling reason why the current system should be abolished, is that the declared winner, George W. Bush, did not even win the most votes. Democrat Al Gore, according to the FEC, won over 500,000 more popular votes than did our current President (see FEC/GOV/2000). It will be left for history to decide how this travesty has affected our nation and our world.

In conclusion, I would submit that, in spite of our Constitution's creation of a republican form of government, an amendment allowing a democratically-elected President is now imperative. The President of the United States is, at least for now, the most powerful person on earth. If we desire to maintain our status as a leader in world that has evolved in startling fashion since our founding, we must allow our peoples' voice to be heard over that of outdated, unworkable tradition. One voice must carry the same weight as any other, and one vote must count as much in Kentucky as it does in Florida. Our people must elect our President.

Dano: Keep the Electoral College System...It's What the Founders Wanted

Okay, folks. Following a lengthy time during which I didn't feel I could do justice to the debates because of my head injuries, I'm getting back into it. While things are still difficult, I think I can function well enough, now, to give this a shot.

This week, the coin-flip says I argue for maintaining the Electoral College system for presidential and vice-presidential elections.


The "Problem" with the Electoral College

So, what is the big stink? Why are we asking this week's question?

While Reed will likely bring up other issues, the most prevalent complaint is simple. Under the Electoral College system, it is entirely possible for the majority of voters to vote for one party's candidates, and the other party's candidates to win the election. How? Easy.

Let's say that the eleven states with the highest number of electoral votes all vote for the Democratic candidates. These states and their numbers of electoral votes are: California (55), Texas (34), New York (31), Florida (27) Illinois (21), Pennsylvania (21), Ohio (20), Michigan (17), Georgia (15), New Jersey (15), and North Carolina (15). Their combined electoral votes equal 271, a sufficient number to win the presidency/vice presidency. But, remember, even in these states, the votes might have been very close; each state may have chosen the winners based upon a bare majority of the popular vote. If every other state in the country, either by a simple majority or an overwhelming majority, voted for the Republican ticket, the total collective nationwide popular vote would be overwhelmingly for the Republican ticket, but the electoral votes of the largest eleven states would have put the Democrats into office. We recently had a mismatch between the popular vote and the electoral vote, and thus, a controversial outcome. This was only the third time in our country's history that such a mismatch occurred, but it was so distressing to a great many voters that it may have been the most important wonky election result ever.

Many will recall the 2000 election, wherein George W. Bush won 271 electoral votes to Gore's 266, but Al Gore won the popular vote by more than 543,000 votes nationwide. Bush did not win via an electoral majority based upon the aforementioned largest eleven states, but won via a simple majority of the electoral vote from all states. The noted official count of the popular votes is independent of the Florida recount question (where many believe that Gore won more of the Florida vote than was actually counted). In other words, even after the official recounts were completed, Gore still had the advantage in popular votes. Many Americans who believe that the popular vote should have mattered in the election outcome have since been vocal opponents of the Electoral College system, whether they opposed it before the election or not. The crux of the issue for these folks, I believe, is the relative importance of the will of the people in choosing our highest elected officials. To be fair, neither candidate in 2000 won a majority of the popular vote (Gore, 48.38%, Bush, 47.87%), but Gore did have more of the popular vote. How could it be okay for more voters to select one party's ticket, and the electoral system to select the other? While I appreciate fairness as much as the next voter, my answer may anger some readers.

The Electoral College is The Best Solution

My primary argument in favor of the Electoral College centers around two things: 1) my own belief that average people don't necessarily make good voters, and 2) the Founding Fathers set up the Electoral College, and they were really, really smart people.

My own beliefs, first. I don't know exactly how or when I developed my views on this issue, but I feel them pretty strongly. I have long been annoyed by campaigns to "get out the vote" because my sense is that people who are politically engaged - those who care about things political - are already registered voters. For instance, if you care enough about what happens in the halls of Congress to exercise your singular voting power to affect legislation, would you not already be an active voter? To be sure, everyone's concerns about political things are proportionate to the amount of political activity that affects their interests. If you are an investor in the stock market, you are more likely to be concerned about legislative actions that affect the value of your investments on Wall Street than would be a non-investor. If you are a property owner, you are more likely to vote on a local referendum on property taxes than would be a renter. From this standpoint, many non-registered citizens are either not aware of the impacts of lawmakers or leaders on their lives, or there are insufficient concerns for them to get involved and to actually vote.

In all candor, I don't care nearly as much about local elections as I do national ones. But I did when I owned a business, here. At that point, I had concerns relative to the health and welfare of my retail store, my employees' job stability, my own administrative load, and my financial exposure due to business costs, taxes, and other such things. When there would arise a local concern about sales tax increases, it mattered to me. When the local city and county governments talked about consolidation that would affect police services, fire services, EMT services, costs of licensure, tax rates, and other issues, it mattered to me. But I no longer own a business, and I don't currently pay property taxes. In short, there are not a lot of local issues that directly affect me greatly, though I try to stay apprised of those issues that might. Nonetheless, because of my lack of vested interests in local issues, I tend not to vote in local elections as consistently as I do national ones.

The same things can be said about some citizens who do not register to vote, and/or don't ever participate in national elections. Perhaps they are unconcerned about whether there is welfare reform, or whether we allow illegal migrant workers to become citizens in some way, or whether taxes for people above the poverty line go up or down. Maybe some of them get lots of help from the government, with community health clinics and with unemployment benefits for six months whenever they might need them. Maybe they even rationalize that, regardless of their concerns, their one little solitary vote won't count in the scheme of things. In each of these cases, there is a lack of sufficient concern about their ability to have an important impact on political happenings to make them educate themselves about candidates or issues. This lack of education, and the associated lack of concern, is (I believe) at the root of voter apathy in this country. But is it really smart, or even okay, for such uninvolved and uneducated people to register and subsequently vote for a candidate based solely upon some unimportant characteristics of the individual candidate, or upon the quasi-authority they personally assign to a preferred commentator or their chosen TV news channel? Voting without a thorough understanding of at least some of the relevant issues, and at least a cursory understanding of the political platform of the candidates, is neither okay nor desirable. Voting for Barack Obama because he's the first viable African American candidate, or for John McCain because he was a POW and he chose a really cute running mate that winks at you through your TV screen is not okay. Voting for the Democratic ticket because Keith Olbermann doesn't like Rush Limbaugh, or for the Republicans because you thought Bill Clinton was an adulterous scoundrel is not okay. Put simply, don't vote if you don't care or if you don't understand the substantive differences between the candidates and/or the issues.

Why be concerned about how many people vote? Primarily, candidates feel that the more people of their party they register to vote, the greater their total number of collective votes will be. Assuming there is no "close call" in a given state, having the majority of votes will gain you the electoral votes you want. Moreover, regardless of winning via electoral majority, if candidates get more than 50% of the popular vote, they feel they have a public "mandate" to push forward their platform promises. So, the way things are, popular vote numbers still matter under the Electoral College system. For pragmatic reasons if not others, politicians don't seem to care about whether their voters are well-involved political students. Nonetheless, this concern about voters being thoughtful and well-informed, if not having a vested interest in political outcomes, is not just unique to me. In fact, it was at the very heart of the development of the Electoral College system. Read on.

The Founding Fathers' Intentions


Whenever a question comes up about the meaning of a loosely constructed or vague Constitutional provision, legal and political scholars often seek the guidance of other historical documents to decipher the intent of our Founding Fathers. What were they thinking? Why did they write it this particular way? One of the most instructive sources of their intent is the body of essays known as the Federalist Papers, written by many of the most preeminent statesmen of the day prior to our Independence. Many would suggest that the Federalist Papers were, in fact, sort of a first draft of the U.S. Constitution. The unique characteristic of these essays is that they are more like a thought diary, or the closest thing we have to a transcript of their debates on important issues that would later become Constitutional provisions.

The genesis of the Electoral College system, and, more specifically, the Founders' intentions with regard to the system of voting for our highest Federal leaders, is clearly illustrated in the Federalist Papers. Specifically, Federalist No. 68, authored largely by Alexander Hamilton, explains why the Founders wanted a group of electors to vote on behalf of the population, rather than counting on the citizens through a tally of their personal votes. Within their language, I find an uncanny similarity to my own personal belief about voters needing to be educated and involved before voting. The following language is from Federalist No. 68, although I have added the italics to sections that are particularly salient:

It was desirable that the sense of the people should operate in the choice of the person to whom so an important trust was to be confided. This end will be answered by committing the right of making it, not to any preestablished body, but to men chosen by the people for the special purpose, and at the particular conjuncture.

 It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.

See http://federalistpapers.com/federalist68.html for more details.

Clearly, the Founders were concerned that only qualified people actually vote for our highest leaders. Suggesting that a "small number" of people, "most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations," clearly reflects their desire that actual voters for president and vice president be uniquely qualified to make these important decisions - the clear implication being that average citizens (the "general mass") were not. While the "general mass" of today is a whole lot better educated generally than were the masses in our Founders' day, the apathetic voter of today is just as dangerous as the unqualified voters were then.

The Founders reckoned that the best way to insure that the actual votes being cast were done by thoughtful and qualified persons was to form what would later be known as the Electoral College, the body of proxies that would vote on behalf of the less-than-qualified average citizens. Nonetheless, they regarded the popular vote as important enough to be taken into account by the electors. And changes to the Constitution as well as state election laws have made the system, while not perfect, more fair today than ever before. It is simply a rarity, as in the 2000 election, that the popular vote majority does not end up choosing the winning presidential ticket.

Other Benefits of the Electoral College

Philosophical considerations aside, there are other important advantages inherent in the Electoral College system. I'll list a couple below, but there are many more. See http://www.uselectionatlas.org/INFORMATION/INFORMATION/electcollege_procon.php for more information.

One additional and important benefit is that the Electoral College eliminates the detrimental effects of disparities between voter turnout in various states. For instance, if November 4th finds the bulk of the country enjoying fair weather, but the New England states buried in eight feet of snow (which therefore prevents large numbers of Northern voters from getting to the polls), the states adversely affected still have their appointed numbers of electoral votes. In other words, even in a case where only 15% of voters can vote, so long as the proportional differences between the numbers of Democratic votes and Republican votes remains relatively constant within, say, Connecticut, that state will still have it's full number of allotted electoral votes. Imagine the detrimental affect, however, if we used a popular vote total, instead. Suddenly, the bad weather in traditionally Democratic Connecticut might unfairly compromise the Democrats nationally, because the solidly Republican central plains states see high voter turnout because their weather is pleasant. Under the Electoral College system, Connecticut still gets their seven electoral votes - even with only 15% voter turnout. Iowa, which may have had 60% voter turnout under good weather conditions, also only gets its seven allotted electoral votes. So the Electoral College manages to even out voter turnout differences while maintaining dependence on the popular vote within each state.

Another benefit of the Electoral College is that it isolates each state from all the others, and, therefore, isolates election problems as well. In other words, because the current system means that every state chooses its own rules and methods for generating the final state electoral tally, it is far easier to identify irregularities in voting infrastructure (think "hanging chad" from election 2000). Recounts necessitated by voting anomalies within a single state are more efficient than a nationwide recount in such a circumstance.

So, in the final analysis, there is nothing inherently wrong with the Electoral College system. Except in the rarest of cases, the power of individual votes still determines how the citizens of each state collectively vote for president and vice president. The advantages of the system are several-fold, but the fact that the College satisfies the Founding Fathers' desire that voters be educated, discerning, and interested persons is of the highest importance.

New Debate Topic! Oh, Yeah...and Dano's Back.

Hello, all. While Dano is not by any means back to his usual,  irascible, but reasonable and capable self, he is re-engaging the blog. Dano's posts may prove less complex than previous ones for a time, but this remains to be seen; it is of no consequence, ultimately, as involving himself in this activity will likely help to speed his recovery and future posts should improve accordingly.

This week's topic is: Should we scrap the Electoral College system for voting for President and Vice President of the United States, in favor of a system that relies strictly on the collective popular vote?