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Featured Article: Electoral College

The Electoral College is frequently disparaged by some in the dKos community, and defended by others. While there have been several incendiary claims that it was designed to protect the interests of southern slaveholders, it was actually modeled after Roman processes, designed by respected thinkers after a lot of study of classical government forms.

There are two important parts to this constitutional arrangement, which are actually separate issues but often confused.

The first is vesting the power to elect the President in the hands of a select group of individuals. Constitutionally this is still the case. Presidential Electors can nominate and vote for any qualified US citizen to be President. Any attempt to force them to follow the wishes of other citizens expressed in ballots is unconstitutional. The intention (in best Roman tradition) was to act as a bulwark against Democracy.

The second is the arrangement for allocating 'Electors' between the several states. This is the part familiar to todays political activists, who ignore the actual constitutional power of Electors and concentrate on the distribution of 'Electoral votes'.

The Electoral College seeks to protect state sovereignty in the same way that our legislative branch does, by combining regional and popular representation. Each state is awarded a number of Electoral Votes, determined by adding together the number of that state's Senators and Representatives. Since every state has two senators, the smallest number of Electoral Votes a state can be awarded is three. Washington D.C. also has three Electoral Votes.

This makes a total of 538 Electoral Votes. Each Electoral Vote is entrusted to an individual Presidential Elector who are elected or appointed from the several States and the District of Columbia according to State Laws. The Electors from each State meet in the relevant State Capitol at an appointed date and cast votes for the President and Vice-President. The College never meets or debates collectively across the Nation.

The Electoral College is a majority system, not a plurality system. This means that in order to win the Electoral College, a presidential candidate has to get 270 Electoral Votes. It is important to recognize that this is still true even when a competitive third party is running a candidate for the presidency. It is not enough for one candidate to receive more Electoral Votes than the others, because they could all be below 270 votes total. Instead, a candidate must receive more Electoral Votes than all other candidates combined.

Electoral Votes are awarded on a state level, on a winner-take-all basis (except for Maine and Nebraska, which award two electoral votes to the statewide winner and remaining electoral votes to the winner in each congressional district). Even if a state race is extremely close, the winner receives all of the state's Electoral Votes. In 2000, one little-known fact is that Gore won more close states than Bush did - five of the top seven closest states. (Six of the top seven if you count Florida.) This is seen as an inequity by many, or just part of the strategy by others.

There are several differing election schemes offered up to replace the Electoral College, but so far none of them have captured anywhere near enough popular support to have any momentum. These include:

Nationwide Popular Vote: While many people dislike the implementation of the Electoral College, they may still appreciate the intent of protecting state sovereignty. This system would clearly give more advantage to population centers (usually more liberal), and give disadvantage to sparsely populated states. This discussion has come up a few times in Congress, but it seems safe to say that this approach would never meet the strict requirements to constitutionally pass.

Award By Congressional District: Rather than awarding by state, award an Electoral Vote to whoever wins each congressional district, and then two more (for the Senators) to whoever wins the state. As stated above, Maine and Nebraska currently award their Electoral Votes in this manner. While it seems a good suggestion at first, it's exposed as unworkable due to gerrymandering. The House is supposed to be related to popular representation. In 2000, Gore actually won the popular vote, but Bush carried 239 congressional districts, while Gore carried 196. Using this scheme, Bush would have won by a landslide.

However one reform which could be carried through quite rapidly is - abolishing the Presidential Electors. That is allocating Electoral Votes automatically according to some voting formula instead of electing individuals to be Electors who then have to cast a ballot to give effect to those 'electoral votes'.

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This page was last modified 02:11, 2 July 2004 by dKosopedia user Centerfielder. Content is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.