Electoral College, Which Was Written

Electoral College, which was written into the United States Constitution in 1787, is a complicated process devised by the Founding Fathers to elect the President of the United States, however they could not have anticipated the emergence of national political parties or a communications network capable of bringing presidential candidates before the entire electorate (Electoral pp). By providing that the president be chosen indirectly through the Electoral College rather than directly by the voters in November was one of the Founding Fathers' hedges against popular passion (Electoral pp). At that time the electors had very real powers to work their will, yet now, their sole function is to confirm a decision made by the electorate six weeks earlier (Electoral pp). According to the United States Constitution, each state is authorized to choose electors for president and vice president, and is allotted the number of the combined number of U.S. senators and representatives for that particular state (Electoral pp). The total number of Electoral College votes is 538, based on 100 senators, 435 representatives, plus three electors for the District of Columbia (Electoral pp).

The term "electoral college" does not appear in the Constitution, and Article II of the Constitution and the 12th Amendment refer to "electors," but not to the "electoral college" (U.S. pp). Alexander Hamilton, in the Federalist Papers, refers to the process of selecting the Executive, and refers to "the people of each State (who) shall choose a number of persons as electors," but he does not use the term "electoral college" (U.S. pp).

The Founding Fathers appropriated the concept of electors from the Holy Roman Empire, "an elector was one of a number of princes of the various German states within the Holy Roman Empire who had a right to participate in the election of the German king" (U.S. pp). The term "college" refers to a body of persons that act as a unit, and in the early 1800's, the term "electoral college" came into general usage as the unofficial designation for the group of citizens selected to cast votes for President and Vice President (U.S. pp). It was first written into Federal law in 1845, and today the term appears in 3 U.S.C. section 4, in the section heading and in the text as "college of electors" (U.S. pp).

Although the Electoral College itself is tightly defined by the U.S. Constitution, the method of choosing electors is left to each individual state (Electoral pp). In the beginning, most states did not provide for popular election of the presidential electors, however, today electors are chosen by direct popular vote in every states, and when voters vote for a president, they are really voting for the electors who are pledged to their presidential candidate (Electoral pp).

Since political parties now control presidential politics, the role of the Electoral College has changed drastically from the days of the Founding Fathers (Electoral pp). Instead of having individuals seek to become electors and then vote as they please, the political parties have turned the process "upside down" by arranging slates of electors, all of whom are pledged to support the candidate nominated by the party (Electoral pp). In the early days of the Electoral College, the opposite was true, as electors voted for individual candidates rather than for party slates, with the majority winner being elected president and the runner-up, vice president (Electoral pp). This created some odd situations by today standards, such as in 1796, when the Federalist John Adams, with 71 votes, became president and the Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson, with 68 votes, became vice president (Electoral pp). This would be the equivalent of Bush ending up president with Gore as vice president (Electoral pp). In 1800, Thomas Jefferson and his running mate, Aaron Burr, each won an identical number of electoral votes, thus forcing the election into the House of Representatives, which ultimately resolved it in Jefferson's favor (Electoral pp). To prevent any similar occurrence, the Twelfth Amendment was passed in 1804, requiring the electors to cast two separate ballots, one for president and one for vice president (Electoral pp). This is the only constitutional change that has been made in the Electoral College system, other than adding three electoral votes for the District of Columbia in 1961 (Electoral pp).

Now presidential and vice presidential candidates of a particular party run as a team, and in most states, only the names of the candidates rather than the names of the electors appear on the ballot, however, in some states, both the candidates and the electors are identified (Electoral pp). The winner in each states is determined by counting the votes for each slate of electors, thus the slate receiving the most votes is declared the winner (Electoral pp). A presidential candidate must receive an absolute majority, 270, of the electoral votes cast, and if no candidate receives a majority, then the House of Representatives picks the winner from the top three, with each state delegation in the House casting only one vote, regardless of its size (Electoral pp). The vice president is elected at the same time by the same method, yet the electors vote separately for the two offices, and if no vice presidential candidate receives a majority, then the Senate picks the winner from the top two, with each senator voting as an individual (Electoral pp).

The Electoral College has been criticized over the years, mainly because of the aggregation of electoral votes by states, it is possible that a candidate could win the majority of the popular votes but lose in the Electoral College voting (Electoral pp). This means that if a candidate team wins most of the popular votes in a particular state, that team gets all of the electoral votes in that state, and the loser gets none, regardless of how slim the popular vote margin (Electoral pp). Therefore, a candidate who fails to carry a particular state will not receive a single electoral vote in that state for the popular votes received (Electoral pp). Since presidential elections are won by electoral and not popular votes, it is the electoral vote tally that election night viewers watch (Electoral pp). Another problem is the possibility of "faithless electors" who defect from the candidate to whom they are pledged (Electoral pp). The real danger of faithless electors is that the candidate who wins the popular vote could end up one or two votes short of a majority in the Electoral College and thus could lose the election on a technicality (Electoral pp). Many believe the apportioning of the Electoral College votes by states is a basic flaw, because it gives each of the smaller states at least three electoral votes, even though on a population basis some might be entitled to only one or two (Electoral pp).

Defenders of the Electoral College believe that there is too much uncertainty over whether any other method would be an improvement, and point out that most of the complaints apply just as well to the Senate and the House, and thus fear that reform could lead to the dismantling of the federal system (Electoral pp). Defenders also believe that this method serves American democracy well by fostering a two-party system and thwarting the rise of splinter parties such as those that have plagued many European democracies (Electoral pp). This winner-take-all system means that minor parties receive few electoral votes and that a president emerges who is the choice of the nation as a whole (Electoral pp). Supporters also feel that the Electoral College system democratically reflects population centers by giving urban areas, where the most votes are, electoral power, thus together, urban states come close to marshaling the requisite number of electoral votes to elect a president (Electoral pp). And the final argument is that the Electoral College system has worked throughout the history of the country, and the winner's margin of votes is usually enhanced in the electoral vote, a mathematical happening that can make the winner in a divisive and close election seem to have won more popular support than he actually did, and this is believe to aid the healing of election scars and help the new president in governing (Electoral pp).