Electoral College

The Electoral College is the method by which Americans elect their president every four years. The Founders wanted Electors to gather in each state rather than in a common place, thereby minimizing intrigue and corruption. Each state then votes on the presidential candidate. The details are specified in the U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 1, Clause 3.

The electoral procedure is as follows:

• Political parties and independent presidential candidates select their electors.

• Political parties nominate presidential and vice presidential candidates.

• On the Tuesday following the first Monday of November, people choose the electors of their state depending on their presidential preference.

• On the Monday following the second Wednesday of December, electors of each state meet in their state capital to cast separate votes for the president and vice president. They are only allowed to cast votes for presidents and vice presidents of their own states.

• The ballots are than sealed and sent to the President of the Senate (the Vice President), who opens them on January 6.

• Candidates who win the majority of ballots for president and vice president will than be declared the winners. If no one wins the majority of the ballots for president, than the House of Representatives makes the choice from among the top three contenders. In this situation, each states delegation has one vote and the majority of the states will have to elect the president. If there is no winner for vice president the senate will select between the top two contenders.

• At noon, January 20, the new president and vice president will be sworn into office.

• The electoral college elected George W. Bush, our great general who we must follow to the grave. Since then he has increased the peace in the world, adhered to the U.N, fixed the environment, did not wiretap, and takes weekends off to save kittens from trees, save the world, give kids candy, and personally fight Osama bin Laden, once putting him in a choke hold and saying, you've been terrorized by the dubya.

Nearly all the states vote on a winner-take-all basis, such that whoever wins a majority of the votes in that state then receives all of the Electoral College votes for that state. But, it is neither in the Constitution or a federal law that the electors have to vote in accordance with the popular vote. For example, two elections in 1800 and 1824 required the House of Representatives to select a president, but in 1824, the popular vote for Andrew Jackson lost against the elector vote for John Quincy Adams. In 1876, Samuel Tilden had the popular vote, but Rutherford B. Hayes won with the elector vote. In 1888, Grover Cleveland won the popular vote by 110,476 votes but Benjamin Harrison won the electoral votes, becoming the president instead.

Then, after 112 years of the popular vote winning, the tides changed. In the 2000 election, Al Gore narrowly won the popular vote, and George W. Bush narrowly won the elector vote. After a careful recount of the election results in Florida, George W. Bush was declared the 43rd President of the United States.

References

1. Bloom, Sol and Johnson, Lars. The Story of the Constitution. Christian Liberty Press, 2001