In the United States, the president and vice president are
not chosen directly by the people but by a group of people known as Electoral
College. The term is also often used to refer to the presidential election
system in which they cast their votes. You probably think that it is a name of
an educational institution located somewhere in Washington, D.C., but you would
be wrong as usual. So when a president wins the vote by Electoral College, it
does not mean that the president has a presidential degree from the
institution; there is no Presidential Degree program offered in any college, in
case you are wondering.
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| Some people get in line to vote, others do to get long trousers |
Approaching an Election Day in the United States, voters go the polls but not to vote directly for a presidential candidate. Instead they will vote to elect the electors who will then elect the president on the Election Day. This process is often referred to as popular vote. If that sounds overly confusing because there are too many “elect” words used, you can consider the entire system as mailing process. You write a letter to your friend, put the letter inside an envelope attached with a mailing address, and give it to the postman; your responsibility ends here. It is the postman’s job to deliver the letter to your friend. Based on this stupid analogy, the postman is an elector and your friend is the presidential candidate.
Each state has certain number of approved electors based on
population. In other words, more populated state gets higher number of electors
compared to their less populated counterparts. Therefore, the number of
electors differs from state to state; some have more than a couple of dozens,
while others only have three. Currently there are 538 electors which consist of
435 representatives, 100 senators, and 3 more electors allocated to Washington,
D.C. Here is a list of electoral votes allocations based on 2010 census. The
following allocations were effective for the 2016 presidential elections and
will still be effective for the 2020:
State
|
Number of Electoral
Votes
|
California
|
55
|
Texas
|
38
|
Florida
|
29
|
New York
|
29
|
Illinois
|
20
|
Pennsylvania
|
20
|
Ohio
|
18
|
Georgia
|
16
|
Michigan
|
16
|
North Carolina
|
15
|
New Jersey
|
14
|
Virginia
|
13
|
Washington
|
12
|
Arizona
|
11
|
Indiana
|
11
|
Massachusetts
|
11
|
Tennessee
|
11
|
Maryland
|
10
|
Minnesota
|
10
|
Missouri
|
10
|
Wisconsin
|
10
|
Alabama
|
9
|
Colorado
|
9
|
South Carolina
|
9
|
Kentucky
|
8
|
Louisiana
|
8
|
Connecticut
|
7
|
Oklahoma
|
7
|
Oregon
|
7
|
Arkansas
|
6
|
Iowa
|
6
|
Kansas
|
6
|
Mississippi
|
6
|
Nevada
|
6
|
Utah
|
6
|
Nebraska
|
5
|
New
Mexico
|
5
|
West Virginia
|
5
|
Hawaii
|
4
|
Idaho
|
4
|
Maine
|
4
|
New Hampshire
|
4
|
Rhode Island
|
4
|
Alaska
|
3
|
Delaware
|
3
|
District of Columbia
|
3
|
Montana
|
3
|
North Dakota
|
3
|
South Dakota
|
3
|
Vermont
|
3
|
Wyoming
|
3
|
Minimum number is 3 because a state has at least two
senators and one representative. A presidential candidate needs 270 electoral
votes to elected (1 vote more than half the total number). In case you hate
math because you cannot count, half of 538 is 269.
Nomination
In most states, electors are selected by the political
parties months prior to the presidential Election Day. Some states also allow
the electors to be nominated by voters during the primaries rather than chosen
in party conventions. Anybody can be an elector except when the person is
holding a federal office (either appointed or elected) or has sworn an oath to
support the United States Constitution but later went rogue and berserk.
There were some cases when appointed electors actually voted
for the presidential candidate from the opposing party; they are called
Faithless Electors. In Pennsylvania, the electors are selected by presidential
campaign committee to avoid such instances. To discourage Faithless Electors
even further, District of Columbia along with 29 states have passed laws to
penalize Faithless Electors; according to Wikipedia, however, none of them have
been enforced. Michigan takes the extra mile by actually voiding the faithless
elector’s vote. As with almost anything else, it if it is written in Wikipedia,
let us just assume it is accurate.
State’s Electoral
Vote
Except in two states, the party that wins the popular vote
sends all its electors to Washington, D.C. to cast their votes on presidential
candidate on Election Day, not to visit the National Mall. Nebraska and Maine
are quite different because they appoint only two electoral votes to the
overall winner of popular vote in the entire states, while the rest of them are
appointed to winner of congressional districts. Nebraska has three
congressional districts and Maine has two.
For the Sake of
Fairness
The main purpose of Electoral College system is to
distribute voting power for less populated states. At the end of the day, the
president and vice president are chosen based on balanced constitutional values
across the country. California is the most populated state, but it represents
only 10.22% of the total college.
When presidential candidates get no majority of the votes,
the House of Representatives is responsible for electing the president. Each
delegation from every state only has one vote regardless of the state’s
population. Majority is required to win the election. Vice president is elected
by the Senate; each senator also has one vote