The Electoral College Explained

[krome2ez]

Bill Whittle Explains the "Electoral College"

Once and for All! (Ep 27)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWoEVM9gkpY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWoEVM9gkpY

[cris]

Bill Whittle is a great guy....This type of info should be in every school

[dontlop]

i agree with this explaination of the electorial college .. id like to add something to his explaination of just campaigning in a certain few big citys and win elections .. once they take control by the powers of a few large citys .. they can control the tax dollars into those localities .buying votes . and the small states wouldnt matter like iowa ....wyoming .. ect. they wouldnt get much of any tax dollars and there states would be third world like .. and theres nothing they could do ..besides try to succeed from the nation. the big citys will not control our nation .

[krome2ez]

Bill Whittle is a great guy....This type of info should be in every school

I agree. He brings the point home.

[PowerGeneration]

I knew if you liked it cris there had to be a reason.

What was wrong with the way we used to vote?

Each vote is written in (paper ballot) and then counted.pretty basic stuff to me.

Why didnt they use a independant guy to explain the electoral college?

I would vote out the electoral college no need for it.paper ballot is king and the

bill whiners just cant handle a fair election.

easy to explain its called the UNITED STATES and all states are united as equals.

No state should have more power over the others as to more electoral votes.

and thats just the way it is today.Thats why we see it in the news already this person is winning

in this state and everyone hasnt even voted yet.horrible idea and who invented this electoral college?

typical instead of just telling it like it is right out of a book he injects republican views as the right

way.JMHO. both sides have the power not just the one.

[krome2ez]

I knew if you liked it cris there had to be a reason.

What was wrong with the way we used to vote?

Each vote is written in (paper ballot) and then counted.pretty basic stuff to me.

Why didnt they use a independant guy to explain the electoral college?

I would vote out the electoral college no need for it.paper ballot is king and the

bill whiners just cant handle a fair election.

easy to explain its called the UNITED STATES and all states are united as equals.

No state should have more power over the others as to more electoral votes.

and thats just the way it is today.Thats why we see it in the news already this person is winning

in this state and everyone hasnt even voted yet.horrible idea and who invented this electoral college?

typical instead of just telling it like it is right out of a book he injects republican views as the right

way.JMHO. both sides have the power not just the one.

Did you even watch the video??

And if you knew anything of Bill Whittle, you'd know he's not in the Republican camp.

Here's a bit of history for you.....

In order to appreciate the reasons for the Electoral College, it is essential to understand its historical context and the problem that the Founding Fathers were trying to solve. They faced the difficult question of how to elect a president in 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 4,000,000 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, under 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.").

How, then, to choose a president without political parties, without national campaigns, and without upsetting the carefully designed balance between the presidency and the Congress on one hand and between the States and the federal government on the other?

Origins of the Electoral College

The Constitutional Convention considered several possible methods of selecting a president.

One idea was to have the Congress choose the president. This idea was rejected, however, because some felt that making such a choice would be too divisive an issue and leave too many hard feelings in the Congress. Others felt that such a procedure would invite unseemly political bargaining, corruption, and perhaps even interference from foreign powers. Still others felt that such an arrangement would upset the balance of power between the legislative and executive branches of the federal government.

A second idea was to have the State legislatures select the president. This idea, too, was rejected out of fears that a president so beholden to the State legislatures might permit them to erode federal authority and thus undermine the whole idea of a federation.

A third idea was to have the president elected by a direct popular vote. Direct election was rejected not because the Framers of the Constitution doubted public intelligence but rather because they feared that without sufficient information about candidates from outside their State, people would naturally vote for a "favorite son" from their own State or region. At worst, no president would emerge with a popular majority sufficient to govern the whole country. At best, the choice of president would always be decided by the largest, most populous States with little regard for the smaller ones.

Finally, a so-called "Committee of Eleven" in the Constitutional Convention proposed an indirect election of the president through a College of Electors.

The function of the College of Electors in choosing the president can be likened to that in the Roman Catholic Church of the College of Cardinals selecting the Pope. The original idea was for the most knowledgeable and informed individuals from each State to select the president based solely on merit and without regard to State of origin or political party.

The structure of the Electoral College can be traced to the Centurial Assembly system of the Roman Republic. Under that system, the adult male citizens of Rome were divided, according to their wealth, into groups of 100 (called Centuries). Each group of 100 was entitled to cast only one vote either in favor or against proposals submitted to them by the Roman Senate. In the Electoral College system, the States serve as the Centurial groups (though they are not, of course, based on wealth), and the number of votes per State is determined by the size of each State's Congressional delegation. Still, the two systems are similar in design and share many of the same advantages and disadvantages.

The similarities between the Electoral College and classical institutions are not accidental. Many of the Founding Fathers were well schooled in ancient history and its lessons.

The First Design

In the first design of the Electoral College (described in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution):

Each State was allocated a number of Electors equal to the number of its U.S. Senators (always 2) plus the number of its U.S. Representative (which may change each decade according to the size of each State's population as determined in the decennial census). This arrangement built upon an earlier compromise in the design of the Congress itself and thus satisfied both large and small States.

The manner of choosing the Electors was left to the individual State legislatures, thereby pacifying States suspicious of a central national government.

Members of Congress and employees of the federal government were specifically prohibited from serving as an Elector in order to maintain the balance between the legislative and executive branches of the federal government.

Each State's Electors were required to meet in their respective States rather than all together in one great meeting. This arrangement, it was thought, would prevent bribery, corruption, secret dealing, and foreign influence.

In order to prevent Electors from voting only for a "favorite son" of their own State, each Elector was required to cast two votes for president, at least one of which had to be for someone outside their home State. The idea, presumably, was that the winner would likely be everyone's second favorite choice.

The electoral votes were to be sealed and transmitted from each of the States to the President of the Senate who would then open them before both houses of the Congress and read the results.

The person with the most electoral votes, provided that it was an absolute majority (at least one over half of the total), became president. Whoever obtained the next greatest number of electoral votes became vice president - an office which they seem to have invented for the occasion since it had not been mentioned previously in the Constitutional Convention.

In the event that no one obtained an absolute majority in the Electoral College or in the event of a tie vote, the U.S. House of Representatives, as the chamber closest to the people, would choose the president from among the top five contenders. They would do this (as a further concession to the small States) by allowing each State to cast only one vote with an absolute majority of the States being required to elect a president. The vice presidency would go to whatever remaining contender had the greatest number of electoral votes. If that, too, was tied, the U.S. Senate would break the tie by deciding between the two.

In all, this was quite an elaborate design. But it was also a very clever one when you consider that the whole operation was supposed to work without political parties and without national campaigns

while maintaining the balances and satisfying the fears in play at the time. Indeed, it is probably because the Electoral College was originally designed to operate in an environment so totally different from our own that many people think it is anachronistic and fail to appreciate the new purposes it now serves. But of that, more later.

The Second Design

The first design of the Electoral College lasted through only four presidential elections. For in the meantime, political parties had emerged in the United States. The very people who had been condemning parties publicly had nevertheless been building them privately. And too, the idea of political parties had gained respectability through the persuasive writings of such political philosophers as Edmund Burke and James Madison.

One of the accidental results of the development of political parties was that in the presidential election of 1800, the Electors of the Democratic-Republican Party gave Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr (both of that party) an equal number of electoral votes. The tie was resolved by the House of Representatives in Jefferson's favor - but only after 36 tries and some serious political dealings which were considered unseemly at the time. Since this sort of bargaining over the presidency was the very thing the Electoral College was supposed to prevent, the Congress and the States hastily adopted the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution by September of 1804.

To prevent tie votes in the Electoral College which were made probable, if not inevitable, by the rise of political parties (and no doubt to facilitate the election of a president and vice president of the same party), the 12th Amendment requires that each Elector cast one vote for president and a separate vote for vice president rather than casting two votes for president with the runner-up being made vice president. The Amendment also stipulates that if no one receives an absolute majority of electoral votes for president, then the U.S. House of Representatives will select the president from among the top three contenders with each State casting only one vote and an absolute majority being required to elect. By the same token, if no one receives an absolute majority for vice president, then the U.S. Senate will select the vice president from among the top two contenders for that office. All other features of the Electoral College remained the same including the requirements that, in order to prevent Electors from voting only for "favorite sons", either the presidential or vice presidential candidate has to be from a State other than that of the Electors.

In short, political party loyalties had, by 1800, begun to cut across State loyalties thereby creating new and different problems in the selection of a president. By making seemingly slight changes, the 12th Amendment fundamentally altered the design of the Electoral College and, in one stroke, accommodated political parties as a fact of life in American presidential elections.

It is noteworthy in passing that the idea of electing the president by direct popular vote was not widely promoted as an alternative to redesigning the Electoral College. This may be because the physical and demographic circumstances of the country had not changed that much in a dozen or so years. Or it may be because the excesses of the recent French revolution (and its fairly rapid degeneration into dictatorship) had given the populists some pause to reflect on the wisdom of too direct a democracy.

The Evolution of the Electoral College

Since the 12th Amendment, there have been several federal and State statutory changes which have affected both the time and manner of choosing Presidential Electors but which have not further altered the fundamental workings of the Electoral College. There have also been a few curious incidents which its critics cite as problems but which proponents of the Electoral College view as merely its natural and intended operation.

http://uselectionatlas.org/INFORMATION/INFORMATION/electcollege_history.php

[Butifldrm]

I knew if you liked it cris there had to be a reason.

What was wrong with the way we used to vote?

Each vote is written in (paper ballot) and then counted.pretty basic stuff to me.

Why didnt they use a independant guy to explain the electoral college?

I would vote out the electoral college no need for it.paper ballot is king and the

bill whiners just cant handle a fair election.

easy to explain its called the UNITED STATES and all states are united as equals.

No state should have more power over the others as to more electoral votes.

and thats just the way it is today.Thats why we see it in the news already this person is winning

in this state and everyone hasnt even voted yet.horrible idea and who invented this electoral college?

typical instead of just telling it like it is right out of a book he injects republican views as the right

way.JMHO. both sides have the power not just the one.

PG, the Electoral College has been in existance since the penning of our Constitution. You said "What was wrong with the way we used to vote?" Nothing is wrong with it, because the Electoral College has been in existence since our Forefathers wrote it into the under Article II. The Electorite should vote the majority vote of the state he/she represents. There have been only 4 elections in our history won by the electoral vote, which differed formt he popular vote. They are:

• John Quincy Adams who lost by 44,804 votes to Andrew Jackson in 1824
• Rutherford B. Hayes who lost by 264,292 votes to Samuel J. Tilden in 1876
• Benjamin Harrison who lost by 95,713 votes toGrover Cleveland in 1888
• George W. Bush who lost by 543,816 votes to Al Gore in the 2000 election.

Social Studies for Kids

Home • Fun Facts • Glossaries • Newsletter • FAQ • Forum

The Electoral College

On This Site

• How the President Is Elected

• U.S. Presidents

• U.S. Government

The Electoral College is a group of people who gather to cast their votes for the various presidential candidates (much like the delegates at the political party conventions). When we as Americans are casting our votes for the presidential candidates, we are actually casting our votes for electors, who will cast their votes for the candidates.

Article II of the Constitution lists the specifics of the Electoral College. The Founding Fathers included the Electoral College as one of the famous "checks and balances" for two reasons: 1) to give states with small populations more of an equal weight in the presidential election and 2) they didn't trust the common man (Remember, women couldn't vote then.) to be able to make an informed decision on which candidate would make the best president.

First of all, the same theory that created the U.S. Senate practice of giving two Senators to each state created the Electoral College. The large-population states had their populations reflected in the House of Representatives. New York and Pennsylvania, two of the states with the largest populations, had the highest number of members of the House of Representatives. But these two states still had only two senators, the exact same number that small-population states like Rhode Island and Delaware had. This was true as well in the Electoral College: Each state had just one vote, regardless of how many members of the House represented that state. So, the one vote that the state of New York cast would be decided by an initial vote of New York's Representatives. (If that initial vote was a tie, then that deadlock would have to be broken.)

Secondly, when the Constitution was being written, not many people knew a whole lot about government, politics, or presidential elections. A large number of people were farmers or lived in rural areas, where they were far more concerned with making a living and providing for their families than they were with who was running for which office. Many of these "common people" could not read or write, either, and wouldn't be able to read a ballot in any case. Like it or not, the Founding Fathers thought that even if these "common people" could vote, they wouldn't necessarily make the best decision for who would make the best president. So, the Electoral College was born.

Technically, the electors do not have to vote for anyone. The Constitution does not require them to do so. And throughout the history of presidential elections, some have indeed voted for someone else. But tradition holds that the electors vote for the candidate chosen by their state, and so the vast majority of electors do just that.

The Electoral College meets a few weeks after the presidential election. Mostly, their meeting is a formality.

When all the electoral votes are counted, the president with the most votes wins. In most cases, the candidate who wins the popular vote also wins in the Electoral College. However, this has not always been the case.

http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/articles/government/theelectoralcollege.htm

[stonewall67]

I knew if you liked it cris there had to be a reason.

What was wrong with the way we used to vote?

Each vote is written in (paper ballot) and then counted.pretty basic stuff to me.

Why didnt they use a independant guy to explain the electoral college?

I would vote out the electoral college no need for it.paper ballot is king and the

bill whiners just cant handle a fair election.

easy to explain its called the UNITED STATES and all states are united as equals.

No state should have more power over the others as to more electoral votes.

and thats just the way it is today.Thats why we see it in the news already this person is winning

in this state and everyone hasnt even voted yet.horrible idea and who invented this electoral college?

typical instead of just telling it like it is right out of a book he injects republican views as the right

way.JMHO. both sides have the power not just the one.

Wow.... Did you proof read this before you posted it for the world to see??? Are you from Austin??

[PowerGeneration]

Yes I watched the whole video.

Krome and beautiful explained it way better than whiner did.Thank You for posting this your time and efforts are not wasted.

at least I know the facts about the electoral vote.

As you stated no one trusted the common man

I dont trust any machine And I dont trust any government official either with my vote.

I am not afraid of where I live its posted under my username Old River,Texas

I read what I posted as always and I know you dont like what I said but if every law and every person

was elected by paper ballot it would be a fair election period!I would trust my fellow man and his votes.

Even on the news I am watching now it says mitt has these states and obama has these states how can that be if everyone hasnt voted yet? Most wait until the last day to get

all the facts and then vote.Plus why should they be looking at who we voted for yet until election day as to

procrastinate who's winning.And who's doing the looking.All votes should be private until election day.Who does

this? So if there state has already given its vote for there incumbant why vote in those states your vote would'nt count.

Its already been decided for them.That suxs! Each vote should count and the results should be read the day of the

election.Oh thats right then there would be no way they could manipulate the election.

I am trying to be fair but its confusing and thats the way they wanted it to be.You just think your vote counts

when someone else is telling them our state voted this way.Bogus.If I am wrong sorry but thats how I am seeing it.

Its why most dont vote there vote doesnt count and it doesnt matter because they are all crooks.

Its why I hate politics because it just doesnt matter who you vote for.I am not trying to sway anyone at all.

I am sick of our gov and the people who are in it.Voting is not going to change a thing it will be business as

usual for them.I apologize to all I am not a political person and it shows so disreguard what I say.

I will stick to what I do know.Electronics.My Apologies!

[cris]

I read what I posted as always and I know you dont like what I said but if every law and every person

was elected by paper ballot it would be a fair election period!I would trust my fellow man and his votes.

Even on the news I am watching now it says mitt has these states and obama has these states how can that be if everyone hasnt voted yet? Most wait until the last day to get

all the facts and then vote.Plus why should they be looking at who we voted for yet until election day as to

procrastinate who's winning.And who's doing the looking.All votes should be private until election day.Who does

this?

Its called polling PG....Certain groups take polls in every state

multiple times during every election, based on these they can determine

to a certain degree which way a State is going to vote.

Some groups are better at this than others....Some use statistically inaccurate

models to base their polls....Some are often right & some want to affect the

outcome of an election by depressing the vote of the other Party...

That last one is known as Liberals.

[krome2ez]

Secondly, when the Constitution was being written, not many people knew a whole lot about government, politics, or presidential elections. A large number of people were farmers or lived in rural areas, where they were far more concerned with making a living and providing for their families than they were with who was running for which office. Many of these "common people" could not read or write, either, and wouldn't be able to read a ballot in any case. Like it or not, the Founding Fathers thought that even if these "common people" could vote, they wouldn't necessarily make the best decision for who would make the best president. So, the Electoral College was born.

Excellent post Butifldrm.

I still think that many people still don't know a whole lot about government, politics, or presidential elections.

Not from lack of information, but rather from apathy.

I dont trust any machine And I dont trust any government official either with my vote.

I am not afraid of where I live its posted under my username Old River,Texas

I read what I posted as always and I know you dont like what I said but if every law and every person

was elected by paper ballot it would be a fair election period!I would trust my fellow man and his votes.

I understand, but you know this post isn't referencing paper ballot vs electronic.

That's a whole other debate.

Edited November 6, 2012 by krome2ez