The Electoral College is the process by which 538 electors make the determination for Office of the Presidency and Vice Presidency.1 The electors in the Electoral College choose the President, not the people in the general election. The process is outlined in Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution as well as the Twelfth and Twenty-Third Amendments. The electors are allocated to match the Congressional Representative of each state. The 538 electors match the 435 Representatives and 100 Senators from each state, plus an additional 3 electors for the District of Columbia.2 Each political party in a state will select a pool of electors, known as a slate, to align to the party’s nominee for President. When the people vote for the candidate of their choosing, they are selecting the slate of electors align to that candidate. The states will normally give all the of the electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote, despite how close the outcome may be.3 Based on this process it is possible that the winner of the popular vote may not win the Presidency, and why the Electoral College receives much criticisms. There have only been five President’s in U.S. history that lost the popular vote, but became President by winning the electoral vote: John Quincy Adams (1824), Rutherford B. Hayes (1876), Benjamin Harrison (1888), George W. Bush (2000), and more recently Donald Trump (2016).4
Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000) was one of two U.S. Supreme Court cases that settled a recount dispute for the State of Florida in the 2000 presidential election. The other case was Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board, 531 U.S. 70 (2000). With a close election, Al Gore’s campaign requested a manual recount in four Florida counties, to include Palm Beach County. Al Gore then challenged Florida’s Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, and her decision to certify the result of the election while ignoring the requested manual recounts.5 The electoral votes for Florida, and election outcome, all came down to who won the popular vote for the state of Florida where Bush’s younger brother, Jeb Bush, was the governor, giving a sense of impropriety in the election results. In the main case of Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court issued a 7-2 ruling that although the recount was legal, the method that the Florida Supreme Court implemented for recounting ballots was unconstitutional as there was suggestion that “different standards were applied from ballot to ballot, precinct to precinct, and county to county.”6 Since a recount was unfeasible, the previous vote certification, issued Katherine Harris, was upheld. George W. Bush won the popular vote by 0.009 percent of the popular vote, or less than one one-hundredths of a percent.7 That slim margin of only 537 votes, compared to the nearly 6 million cast, resulted in the allocation of all of Florida’s 25 electoral votes to Bush. Bush won the electoral vote with 271 electoral votes, one more than the required 270 to win the Electoral College. Although I was too young to understand this election, looking back I do not agree with this decision. With such a narrow margin on both the popular and electoral vote, a proper recount should have been initiated or the electoral votes split to match the outcome of the popular vote.
I am on the fence with the concept of the electoral college. The intent was to mitigate the uniformed and uneducated voter at the time the U.S. was established. Today, uniformed and even uneducated voters are not a significant problem. With the rise of social media and information sharing, there is however, a significant trend of misinformation or “fake news.” Leaving the decision of who holds the highest position of authority to the everyday American does not make sense to me. As many educated and well-informed voters there are, there are plenty of ignorant people who will buy into propaganda. That ignorance leads to uniformed voters who neglect any sense of due diligence in understanding each of the candidates’ stances and policies. Another point of the electoral college is to equally represent the population densities of the United States, the same way the House of Representatives is allocated. More populated such as California or New York, should have more representation or more weigh on the Electoral College than less populated states such as Alaska or Vermont. The issue with this weighted system, is presidential candidates will focus on the larger states in terms of electoral college. States with swaying political parties and a larger number of electors are considered swing states and can drastically alter the course of the election. There is less emphasis on the smaller states that have the minimum of 3 electoral votes (2 senators and 1 representative). The electoral vote is intended to align to the popular vote, but the biggest flaw is the winner take all mentality. In the 2000 election, even prior to the recount, there was a 0.009 percent marginal difference between both candidates. Out of the nearly 6 million votes cast, the different came down to 537 votes. With a state that was almost evenly divided, this is where the electoral college fails our democratic system. Florida gave all 25 electoral votes to George W. Bush who won the President with 271, one electoral vote more than the required minimum. Prior to the decision in Florida, the electoral votes sat at Bush with 246 and Gore with 266, with one elector abstaining to vote. If the electoral votes been split to mimic the popular vote, say 13 to Bush and 12 to Gore, then Al Gore would have certainly won the Presidency by both the general election and the Electoral College.8 Ultimately, I think the electoral college can prove to be as useful today as it was during the inception of our nation. The Electoral College needs to be modified to better reflect the outcome of the General Election without apportioning the entire outcome of an election on the general population.
- The Electoral College, The Electoral College (2019), https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/electoral-college.
- What is the Electoral College?, What is the Electoral College?, https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/about.
- Id.
- Richard Wood, The 5 US presidents who won the election but lost the popular vote The 5 US presidents who won the election but lost the popular vote (2017), https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2017/08/18/the-5-us-presidents-who-won-the-election-but-lost-the-popular-vo/.
- Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board, 531 U.S. 70 (2000)
- Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000)
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