Function of the Electoral College

Article II of the Constitution states simply that "electors" will choose the nation's president, known collectively today as the Electoral College. Invariably, during each modern presidential election season, the usefulness of the Electoral College has become a matter of public debate. Some Americans object to it as an outdated remnant of the Founder's original vision that should be dismantled. But others are content to maintain a system that has endured for more than 200 years.

A means of electing the U.S. President, the Electoral College was a compromise worked out by the Founders during the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The delegates rejected several ideas as to who would elect the president, including Congress and the state legislatures. They also would not permit the American people to elect the president by direct vote; they voted down two such proposals. The constitutional delegates feared this advanced level of democracy, believing that the average citizen was not educated enough to be entrusted with the vote. In the end, the delegates settled upon a system of electors, modeled on an electoral system used in republican Rome. When Romans voted, each set of 100 ballots was combined and counted as a single vote. In this way, the impact of each individual vote was reduced. Continuing this tradition, the institution of the Electoral College imposes a filter between the raw will of the people and the nation's highest office.

The Founders took great care to ensure that the Electoral College would remain grounded in the individual states, preventing the emergence of an all-powerful central government. Originally, state legislatures selected the electors (although that system has since been replaced). And the electors met and cast their ballots in their respective state capitals, not in a national setting, which is still the case today. That way, the danger of bribes and influence-peddling was reduced. It also kept powerful states or interest blocs from dominating elections. Today, it explains why our national elections remain so grounded in, and focused on, individual states. In essence, within the national framework, each state retains its own identity when it comes to electing a president.

Under Article II of the Constitution, each state receives one elector for each member it sends to the House of Representatives and one for each of its senators. Today, the number of representatives in the House and the number of U.S. senators mean that there are 538 electoral ballots cast in each presidential election. To win the presidency, a candidate must receive a simple majority of 270 votes. While this seems like a simple system, the means by which electors are selected and the means by which ballots are cast and counted are rather complicated. In most states, electors are selected at state party conventions or by the parties' central committees. Often, they are long-term members of each party who are rewarded for their service by the honor of serving as elector. Nearly all U.S. states use a "winner-take-all" system, in which the candidate who receives the majority of the popular vote in that state receives all of the state's electoral vote (Nebraska and Maine allot their votes proportionally). However, there is a significant loophole in the law for many U.S. states. There are no federal or constitutional provisions mandating that electors must cast their ballots in accordance with the popular vote, and not all states legally require their electors to cast their ballots for the candidate who receives the most votes in the state. In theory, electors in these states could cast ballots for any candidate, not necessarily the one who receives the majority of the votes. Scenarios of the "faithless elector" have occurred for different reasons: electors have made ballot errors; electors have had to change their vote because the candidate for whom they intended to vote had died; or electors have intentionally withheld or changed their vote to make a statement. Though such incidents have never significantly changed the outcome of an election, the danger of "faithless electors" altering the outcome of presidential elections is one factor usually cited by those who wish to remove the Electoral College from the U.S. election system.

Because states with large populations have more electors, large states are the key to success, but a group of small states can offset a large one. It is even possible to win the popular vote and lose the election, depending on what electoral votes are won or lost. Such cases occurred in 1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000.

"Function of the Electoral College." American Government. 2008. ABC-CLIO. 15 Sep. 2008 <

Questions to Answer:

  1. Why does the U.S. have the Electoral College system?
  2. How many electoral votes are there? How are they divided among the states?
  3. How many electoral votes are needed to win?
  4. What is the “winner-take-all” system? What states do not have this system?
  5. What is a “faithless elector?”
  6. What is the biggest problem with the electoral college? When did this occur?