The Electoral College:
The Only Votes that Really Count

Contrary to popular belief, voters who go to the polls November 7 will not elect the next president of the United States. Instead they'll decide who from their state--whether Democrat, Republican, or other--will choose the next president for them. These special representatives, or electors, are known collectively as the electoral college, and the role they play in the American political system is likely to come under scrutiny following this year's tight presidential race.

The outcome of the Bush-Gore contest ultimately will be determined by that uniquely American brand of political calculus known as electoral math. Electoral votes are apportioned to each of the 50 states based on its number of congressional seats. The 538 total electoral votes come from the number of Senate seats (100), which are divided equally among the states, and House seats (435), which are divided according to a state's population, with additional electoral votes for the District of Columbia (3). To win a candidate must receive a majority of electoral votes--currently 270. In other words the popular vote, while often suggesting who wins the election, is essentially meaningless. The distribution of votes from state to state is what actually determines the winner. Or, to rephrase Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign mantra: It's the electoral vote, stupid.

The System

The electoral college is an invention of the Founding Fathers, who, in drafting the Constitution, sought a way to achieve a national consensus at a time of fierce local partisanship. By giving each elector two votes and requiring that at least one be for someone not from his own state, the organizers hoped to foster national unity in the selection of a president.

It was once common for states to split their electors based on the voting breakdown within the state. Today the candidate that wins a state takes all of its electoral votes in every state except Maine and Nebraska. Each state decides for itself how to award its electoral votes.

Electors are usually state party officials or others chosen by the party for their loyalty, but in rare instances some have voted for candidates other than their party's nominee. In 1976, for example, a Washington elector voted for Ronald Reagan instead of the Republican Party's nominee, Gerald Ford, and in 1988 a West Virginia elector voted for Democratic vice presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen for president and for presidential candidate Michael Dukakis for vice president. Many states try to guard against such "faithless electors" by administering fines or other penalties to those who are said to betray the public's trust.

Despite election day fanfare and screaming newspaper headlines announcing the winner, the outcome of the election does not become official until more than a month later. On the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December (Dec. 18 this year), electors gather in each state to vote for president and vice president. They then send the results to Congress, where votes from all the states are counted on January 6. Two weeks later, on January 20, the candidate who received the greatest number of electoral votes is inaugurated as president.

The Debate

In most presidential contests the electoral college is an afterthought. After all, the popular vote is more easily understood and generally indicates the outcome of the electoral vote. In close races, however, this is not always so. Twice in American history a candidate has lost the popular vote but won a majority of the electoral vote and thus the election. In 1876 Rutherford B. Hayes narrowly won the electoral vote despite losing the popular vote to opponent Samuel Tilden 51 to 48 percent. In 1888 Benjamin Harrison defeated Grover Cleveland in the electoral college but lost the popular vote to Cleveland 49 to 48 percent. These historical examples add fuel to the fire for those who argue that the electoral system should be abolished, in part because it allows a candidate to win an election while lacking the support of a majority of the electorate.

The debate over the electoral college has provided grist for political theorists almost since it was created. There have been more than 700 proposals to reform or eliminate the electoral college over the past 200 years, and changing the electoral college has been the most common subject of proposed Constitutional amendments. Yet the system survives, more than two centuries after it was conceived.

Judith Best, author of The Choice of the People?: Debating the Electoral College (1996, Rowman & Littlefield), says that the electoral college serves an important function in American government by requiring that candidates appeal to voters in many regions and with many interests, as opposed to focusing only on the needs of one large bloc of voters.

"Politics is not arithmetic," she says. "It's not simply counting heads. It's coalition building, and that means that votes must be gathered on a community basis."

Best says that the electoral system mirrors the congressional system for a reason: It reflects the federal republic established by the Founding Fathers, which is made up of states as opposed to being a unified nation with just a single government.

The case against the electoral college is that it does not reflect the will of the largest number of voters and that it gives voters in larger states more influence.

"The greatest number of American citizens should have their wishes reflected in the person elected as president," says Lawrence Longley, author of The Electoral College Primer (1999, Yale University Press). "There is no excuse for some votes counting for more than others according to the state in which they are cast. The majority should determine the presidency."

Despite his opposition to the electoral college, Longley says that if it were abolished it would have little effect on the public's view of the process since most people generally don't pay attention to it anyway. The only change is that it would "ensure a fair determination of the presidency," he says.

Best thinks that changing to a direct national election would have a dramatic effect. "It would totally change the way we elect the president and the kind of presidents who get elected," she says. "If you change the rules you raise the possibility of having a sectional contest: North against South, East against West."

Ultimately, the electoral college is a trade-off--an imperfect system that sacrifices direct democracy, in which the majority rules, for the benefits of representative democracy, in which individuals are chosen to represent the will of the people. The fact that it has survived so many challenges over the years suggests that it isn't going away any time soon, meaning that aspirants to the presidency will continue having to bone up on their electoral math.

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