To polling stations close on Election Daymillions of people in the United States are voting for their favorite candidates to succeed President Biden in the White House. But determining the winner isn’t as simple as tallying up how many people voted for Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump, because of the Electoral College.
The Electoral College is a controversial step in the American election process dates from the 18th century. While there is a growing movement try to get rid of itothers defend the system that gives some states more weight in the presidential elections.
Why was the Electoral College created in the first place?
Whether the Electoral College is fair or necessary depends on the question intense debate which in some ways goes back to its founding.
The concept emerged during the Constitutional Convention, which took place over a four-month period in 1787 to address problems with the early system of government in the United States. State delegates attending the convention were divided in their views on how the country should choose its president. Some suggested that Congress should choose the executive branch and others argued for direct democracy, where citizens would vote to choose their leader. At the time, voting rights were almost entirely limited to white men who owned property.
What to do about the method for selecting a president became a drawn-out debate at the convention, said Michael Thorning, director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Democracy Project, who told CBS News that the issue was ultimately passed to a group that charges was resolving previous disagreements on the issue. certain parts of the Constitution. It was called the Committee on Unfinished Parts.
The committee members arrived at the Electoral College as a compromise.
“There were some participants at the Constitutional Convention who did not trust the will of the people,” Thorning said. “They were concerned that you would be asking people with very little political experience, knowledge of the candidates and understanding of their platforms to select someone they might not know. And so they may only vote for the person whose name they recognize. versus the most competent candidate. So this was a bargain.”
The size of the population was a major point of contention. Delegates attending the convention came from large states, such as New York and Pennsylvania, and small states, such as New Jersey and New Hampshire. While some of the larger states would have preferred an election system powered by the popular vote, which would give them more say in elections than a state with fewer voters, Thorning said delegates from some smaller states were concerned about fact that they would be ‘swamped’ by more densely populated neighbors.
Other major states that sent delegates to the Constitutional Convention had institutionalized slavery. At the time, hundreds of thousands of people were enslaved throughout the South, representing approximately 40% of the Southern population. Under the infamous “three-fifths compromise” decided at the same convention—which allowed Southern states to count three-fifths of their enslaved population in their total census—slaveholding states could have significant power in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College. , even though only a fraction of their residents were allowed to vote.
Why are electoral votes important in presidential elections?
Elements of the Electoral College have changed since the Constitution was written, since voting rights have been expanded and citizens choose their state’s electors. But his fundamental role in choosing the president has remained.
“We have 50 state elections that are all happening separately,” Thorning said. “What matters is who wins each of the 50 state elections.”
Electors are assigned to each state roughly based on population, with the number of electors equal to the total number of U.S. Senators and House of Representatives members in Congress. That means even the least populous states get three, while many states have twelve or more; the state with the largest population, California, currently has 54.
In most states, it is a winner-takes-all system, with all electoral votes going to the candidate who wins the majority of votes in the state. Only Maine and Nebraska have slightly different systems for apportioning their voters based on who won at the congressional district level.
There are 538 electors who will cast their votes in the Electoral College, and a presidential candidate must secure at least 270 of those votes to win.
It is possible to win the popular vote nationwide but still lose the election if states with enough electoral votes go the other way.
This system also means that candidates end up spending a disproportionate amount of their time and money campaigning in a small number of battleground states that could tip the balance in their favor.
Why do we vote if there is an Electoral College?
When voters cast their presidential ballots, they are essentially choosing the group of voters who will in good faith represent the political party affiliated with their preferred candidate. The people who fill these roles are selected by their party and are usually local officials or committed political supporters.
Thorning called the popular vote for president “a truly unofficial benchmark for elections.”
“As voters go to the polls and see a presidential candidate on the ballot, they are actually voting for voters who represent those people,” he said. “Whoever the prevailing voters are in that election, they are the people who ultimately cast the Electoral College votes. So the post-election period is really a process of translating these many popular elections into the Electoral College.”
After the November election, voters in each state meet in December to formally cast their votes for their state’s winner.
Why do some critics want to get rid of the Electoral College?
Critics of the Electoral College mainly object to the fact that it leaves open the possibility that the outcome may not reflect the outcome of the popular vote. This last happened in 2016, when Trump won the presidency with a majority of Electoral College votes, despite Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, winning the nationwide popular vote by nearly 3 million.
Similar conundrums have played out in a handful of presidential elections before, including 2000, when George W. Bush won the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote to then-Vice President Al Gore. In that race, the majority of votes were split between Bush and Gore by a very narrow margin – much smaller than in 2016.
“Over time, the world has evolved, even if the Electoral College hasn’t evolved that much,” Thorning said. “I think the idea that it’s not a direct popular vote for the presidency in modern times doesn’t seem democratic to some people by some standards.”
Below one proposed alternativecalled the National People’s Vote Compactstates would agree to give their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the national popular vote – even if it does not match the outcome in their state.
Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Harris’ vice presidential running mate, recently spoke out against the Electoral Collegesaying “we need a popular vote” at a campaign event in California.
“I think we all know the Electoral College has to go,” Walz said. ‘But that’s not the world we live in. So we have to win Beaver County, Pennsylvania. We have to be able to go into York, Pennsylvania and win. We need to be in western Wisconsin and win. Reno, Nevada, and win.”
The Harris-Walz campaign followed up with a statement saying his comments did not reflect their official position on the issue.
Thorning pointed out that while the electoral college system is partially enshrined in the Constitution, it can be changed.
“I think we need to continue to debate aspects of our democracy and what’s in our Constitution,” Thorning said. “But at the end of the day, this is the system so far that we have agreed to, and so we have to conduct our politics through the system that we have, and implement changes to that system through the system that we have. There is a way to make that change, if there is support for it.”
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Emily Mae Czachor