Hundreds of millions of Americans will cast their ballots this November, and while many might think they're voting for Barack Obama or Mitt Romney on Election Day — they're not. Presidents are elected not by national popular vote but by a 225-year-old constitutional compromise called the Electoral College.
Created in 1787 to balance power between small and large states, the Electoral College has had a profound effect on presidential elections, leading candidates to focus on so-called battleground states instead of winning over the most total voters.
When the founding fathers were drafting the U.S. Constitution, there were two competing ideas on how to elect the president. One group said Congress should do it; the other said it should be a national vote of eligible citizens. The compromise became part of the second article of the Constitution, although the words "Electoral College" were not included.
So when voters cast their ballots, they're actually selecting electors who will then pick the president and vice-president.
Electoral College by the numbers
In total, there are 538 Electoral College members: states are allotted a vote for each of their two senators, each House representative (depends on population), plus three votes for the District of Columbia. The electors never gather together. They meet in their respective state capitals on the "first Monday after the second Wednesday in December" to symbolically carry out the vote.
The most important number on Election Day is 270 - the number of electoral votes needed to gain a majority and become president.
The popular vote is not important on the national level, but it is at the state level. In nearly every state, it’s “winner take all”: the candidate who gets the most votes wins all of that state’s electors. (Maine and Nebraska use a tiered system and sometimes split their votes.)
If no candidate gets at least 270 electoral votes, the election goes to the newly elected House of Representatives. Each state delegation in the House gets one vote, and a candidate must win a majority of the states to be elected president.
If the Electoral College vote came out to a tie, then the newly elected House would meet again in January and take a vote to see who they prefer to be the president. If the House can't pick a president by the time the Senate then meets, the Senate would choose the vice president who would become the president.
Swing States, Battleground States
Each campaign divides the map into states firmly Republican (“red”), firmly Democrat (“blue”), and swing states. These swings states can be further divided into “leaning” or “battleground” states, which are just too close to call.
The list of tossup states that will decide the outcome of the 2012 presidential election includes Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin, with a combined 110 electoral votes at stake. This list is updated day to day as states swing from leaning to battleground and back again.
Both major party campaigns spend almost all of their time and money on battleground states.
Should the Electoral College go?
Critics of the system argue that it privileges the voters of certain states.
For example, Wyoming, the least-populated state, gets 3 votes, giving it one Electoral College vote per 172,000 people, while California, the largest state, has 55 votes, making it one vote per 655,000 people. Plus, voters in tossup Ohio matter much more than those in Democratic New York or Republican Kansas.
In addition, it is possible for a candidate to get the most votes overall and still lose the election as happened in 1876, 1888 and 2000.
While many proposed constitutional amendments have been written to adopt a direct popular vote instead of the indirect Electoral College system, none have successfully made it through both chambers of Congress.
My answer to the question above.... YES!
Will this happen (the Electoral College go)? Not likely, it is too much in the interest of members of the House and Senate, and their parties, to keep the status quo. Think on that the next time you hear one of these politicos claim they care about voters.
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