Electoral Votes

• Electoral Votes

  http://www.fec.gov/pages/elecvote.htm
  
• United States Electoral College
  The United States Electoral College is a term used to describe the 538 President Electors who meet every 4 years to cast the electoral votes for President and Vice President of the United States; their votes represent the most important component of the presidential election. The Presidential Electors are elected by the popular vote on the day traditionally called election day. Presidential Electors meet in their respective state capitol buildings (or in the District of Columbia) 41 days following election day, never as a national body. At the 51 meetings, held on the same day, the Electors cast the electoral votes. The electoral college, like the national convention, is an indirect element in the process of electing the President.

• Do we need the Electoral College?

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  John Lowe/The Daily Jeffersonian
  8 hours ago

  

  Photo By Michael Neilson/The Daily Jeffersonian
  Precinct Manager Donna Mallett, l, swears in poll workers of Cambridge Precincts 4A and 4B early this morning at Cambridge VFW Post 2901 just prior to the opening of the polls.

  Citizens who tune into election coverage tonight likely will hear the term, "electoral college," at least once and, perhaps, be reminded that they don't directly elect the president of the United States.

  As we learned as recently as the 2000 Election, the candidate with the most popular votes doesn't necessarily make it to the White House.

  In that year, the vote of the Electoral College trumped the vote of the majority of citizens which favored Al Gore (48.4 percent) to George W. Bush (47.9 percent).

  Bush, however, won 271 electoral votes to Gore's 266.

  Does that mean the citizens' votes are meaningless?

  Not at all.

  Although the people do not elect the president directly, they do elect him or her indirectly. The electors look to the popular vote in their given states to determine how they cast their votes.

  In effect, citizens vote for the electors pledged to the candidate they prefer and those electors then vote for the candidate.

  That there is not a direct one-to-one correspondence between the popular vote and the electors' vote is one of the quirks of the electoral college.

  Here's how it works.

  Each state is assigned electors based upon two factors: The number of senators and the number of congressmen it has.

  The number of congressmen is based upon the population which, of course, varies from state to state.

  Ohio, for example, has a population of 11,374,540, according to the 2000 Census. That entitles it to 18 congressmen. The state, of course, has two senators. Add the representatives and senators together for a total of 20 electoral votes.

  On the other hand, South Dakota, although much larger in area than Ohio, has a much smaller population of only 756,874. That population entitles it to only one congressional seat.

  But South Dakota, like Ohio and every other state, has two senators. Thus, it has three electoral votes -- a total number of votes out of proportion to its population.

  In other words, South Dakota gets a vote in the Electoral College for every 252,284 people in the state. Ohio, however, gets a vote only for every 568,727 people.

  It is because of that skewing of the votes in favor of smaller states that presidential contenders who win the popular vote can sometimes lose the White House. It rarely happens, but it can in a close race.

  The question remains why do we maintain such a quixotic system? Should not every citizen's vote carry the same weight?

  Many critics of the Electoral College believe every citizen's vote should carry the same weight. So, those critics call for the abolition of the Electoral College and implementation of a direct, popular vote to decide the presidency.

  Those who support the current system offer a variety of reasons, but their main argument is that the Electoral College gives the new president a wider geographic mandate -- support from across the country instead of support in only two or three isolated areas of the nation.

  In a system dependent upon a strict, popular vote, a candidate could campaign in the 11 states with the greatest populations and ignore the other 39 states.

  Or, they could campaign in the big cities and ignore the rural citizens.

  In 54 presidential campaigns, only four times has the eventual president lost the popular vote: George W. Bush in 2000, Benjamin Harrison in 1888,

  Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876 and John Quincy Adams in 1824.

  When Thomas Jefferson tied in electoral votes with Aaron Burr in 1800, the election was decided in Jefferson's favor by the House of Representatives.

  (jlowe@daily-jeff.com)