The U.S. Electoral College

Contrary to popular belief, the president of the United States does not get elected by counting up everyone’s vote to directly decide the winner. Instead, we have an indirect system, whereby each state counts the winner in that state and then sends representatives (electors) to WashingtonD.C. (the electoral college) to cast votes for that winner. Here’s how it works.

After we vote in November, each state counts their votes and figures out the winner in that state. Then the state gives all its electors to the winning candidate (except Maine and Nebraska, which divide their electors according to the winner in each congressional district). The first candidate to reach 270 electoral votes wins.

The states do not all get the same number of electors. The number of electors for a state equals the number of Senators (two) plus the number of Representatives from that state. The number of Representatives in a state is based on the number of people who live in the state. Since each state has at least one Representative, every state has at least three electors. Big states with a lot of people, such as California, have many electors. Since the last election, the number of electors for many states has changed because the population of the state either went up or down. For example, in 2000, Illinois had 22 electors. But, because of a decrease in the population, it will only have 21 electors in the 2004 election.

It is the electors from all the states who actually elect the president. If no candidate gets a majority of the electoral vote, the House of Representatives elects the president, with each state having one vote. This happened in 1800 and again in 1824.

Concerns about the electoral college system

Many people think that there are problems with this way of electing the president. First, the candidate who receives the most popular votes can still lose the election (which happened in 1876 and 2000). This is because most states give all of their electors to the winner in their state, even if the candidate only won by a few votes. This is called winner-take-all.

Second, since every state gets 2 electors for their 2 Senators, low-population states have proportionally more political power than other states. For example, Montana has a population of 917,621 and 3 electors. If you divide the population by the electors, you find that each elector represents about 305,874 people. If you compare that to Ohio, where the population of 11,435,798 gets 20 electors (or one elector for every 571,799 people), you see that the residents of Montana have greater representation in the electoral college than residents of Ohio.

Questions

  1. Looking at the electoral votes list ( how many electors will your state have in the 2004 presidential election? How does this number compare to a state that abuts your state? Are you surprised at the number of electors in your state vs. a neighboring state?
  1. Based on what you know about the number of electors, how many Congressional Representatives does your state have?
  1. Look at the electoral map ( What is the smallest number of states a candidate needs to win in order to win the election? What are those states? What is the total of their electoral votes?
  1. How many states have either gained or lost electors since 2000? Based on how the states voted in 2000, which party (Republican or Democratic) could benefit from these changes? How many electors could that party gain?
  1. Find the population of your state at About how many voters does each elector represent in your state? Explain how to figure this out. Then write a rule for it.
  1. Consider these two states. Arkansas has a population of 2,725,714 and 6 electors. The state of Washington has 6,131,445 people and 11 electors. Which state has stronger representation in the election of the president? Explain why. To determine about how many voters each elector represents, you may want to first round each state’s population. Think about how to round the number so that it is easily divisible by the number of electors. How does the representation of those two states compare to your state?
  1. The electoral vote system is winner take all. That means that in NY, for example, if 60% of the voters voted for Kerry and 40% voted for Bush, then Kerry would win all 31 electoral votes. Explain – or using 5 states as examples, show - how a candidate that wins a majority of the popular vote can still lose the election.
  1. Who do you think the electors from your state will vote for? What makes you think this?
  1. Which candidate do you predict will win the election? By how many electoral votes? Use a U. S. map or chart similar to the one at to show how you got your answer.
  1. What did you learn about our electoral system that you didn’t know before? What other questions do you have about it? How effective do you think the system is?