The Electoral College is a process, not a place. The founding fathers established it in theConstitution as a compromise between election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens.
The Electoral College process consists of the selection of the electors, the meeting of the electors where they vote for President and Vice President, and the counting of the electoral votes by Congress.
The Electoral College consists of 538 electors. A majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect the President. Your state’s entitled allotment of electors equals the number of members in its Congressional delegation: one for each member in the House of Representatives plus two for your Senators. Read more about the allocation of electoral votes.
Under the 23rd Amendment of the Constitution, the District of Columbia is allocated 3 electors and treated like a state for purposes of the Electoral College. For this reason, in the following discussion, the word “state” also refers to the District of Columbia.
Each candidate running for President in your state has his or her own group of electors. The electors are generally chosen by the candidate’s political party, but state laws vary onhow the electors are selected and what their responsibilities are. Read more about thequalifications of the Electors and restrictions on who the Electors may vote for.
The presidential election is held every four years on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. You help choose your state’s electors when you vote for President because when you vote for your candidate you are actually voting for your candidate’s electors.
Most states have a “winner-take-all” system that awards all electors to the winning presidential candidate. However, Maine and Nebraska each have a variation of “proportional representation.” Read more about the allocation of Electors among the states and try topredict the outcome of the Electoral College vote.
After the presidential election, your governor prepares a “Certificate of Ascertainment” listing all of the candidates who ran for President in your state along with the names of their respective electors. The Certificate of Ascertainment also declares the winning presidential candidate in your state and shows which electors will represent your state at the meeting of the electors in December of the election year. Your state’s Certificates of Ascertainments are sent to the Congress and the National Archives as part of the official records of the presidential election. See the key dates for the 2012 election and information about the roles and responsibilities of state officials, the Office of the Federal Register and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), and the Congress in the Electoral College process.
The meeting of the electors takes place on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December after the presidential election. The electors meet in their respective states, where they cast their votes for President and Vice President on separate ballots. Your state’s electors’ votes are recorded on a “Certificate of Vote,” which is prepared at the meeting by the electors. Your state’s Certificates of Votes are sent to the Congress and the National Archives as part of the official records of the presidential election. See the key dates for the 2012 election and information about the roles and responsibilities of state officials and the Congress in the Electoral College process.
Each state’s electoral votes are counted in a joint session of Congress on the 6th of January in the year following the meeting of the electors. Members of the House and Senate meet in the House chamber to conduct the official tally of electoral votes. (On December 28, 2012, President Obama signed Pub.L. 112-228, as passed by both houses of Congress, moving the day of the vote count from January 6, 2013 (a Sunday) to January 4, 2013.) See the key dates for the 2012 election and information about the role and responsibilities of Congress in the Electoral College process.
The Vice President, as President of the Senate, presides over the count and announces the results of the vote. The President of the Senate then declares which persons, if any, have been elected President and Vice President of the United States.
The President-Elect takes the oath of office and is sworn in as President of the United States on January 20th in the year following the Presidential election.
Learn about the Electors
- How many electoral votes do States get?
- Who selects the Electors?
- What are the qualifications to be an Elector?
- Are there restrictions on who the Electors can vote for?
- More > http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/about.html
Does my vote count? Understanding the electoral college
No, the electoral college is not the worst team in the ACC. It's the group of people who actually elect the president of the United States. How the electoral college works is one of the more complicated parts of the American electoral process — or can be, at least, when things don't go smoothly. This guide will explain how the electoral college works; discuss the origins and development of the electoral college as some controversial elections; and examine how much your vote actually "weighs" in an election.
Table of contents:
- How the electoral college works
- Why not a popular vote? (an historical perspective)
- The people vs. the electors (more historical perspectives)
- Does my vote count?
- Notes
I. How the electoral college works
The people of the United States elect a president every four years, but not directly. Here's how it works.
- In November of a presidential election year, each state holds an election for president in which all eligible citizens may vote. Citizens vote for a "ticket" of candidates that includes a candidate for president and a candidate for vice president.
- The outcome of the vote in each state determines a slate of electors who then, in turn, make the actual choice of president and vice president. Each state has as many electors as it has senators and members of the House of Representatives, for a total of 538. (The District of Columbia gets three electors even though it has no representation in Congress.)
- In December, the electors meet in their respective state capitols to cast their ballots for president and vice president. States may or may not require their electors to vote with the popular majority, and they may or may not give all of their electors to the winner of the statewide popular vote. (See "A Work in Progress," below.)
- These ballots are opened, counted, and certified by a joint session of Congress in January.
- If no candidate wins a majority of the electoral votes or if the top two candidates are tied, the House of Representatives selects a president from among the five candidates with the most votes. Each state's delegation has a single vote. The Senate selects a vice president by the same process. (This hasn't happened since 1876, but it almost happened in 2000.)
What does this mean in practice? It means, as everyone learned or was reminded in 2000, that the candidate who receives the most votes nationwide does not necessarily become president. There is no national election for president, only separate state elections. For a candidate to become president, he or she must win enough state elections to garner a majority of electoral votes. presidential campaigns, therefore, focus on winning states, not on winning a national majority.
It also means that — at least in theory — electors can thwart the popular will and vote for a candidate not supported by the voters of their state. In practice, however, electors are pledged to cast their votes in accordance with the popular vote, and "faithless electors" who go against the popular vote are extremely rare. Had there been a faithless elector in 2000, however, Al Gore might have become president! (See the historical perspective below for more about this.)
Further reading and assignment
A number of websites provide more detailed information about the electoral process.
- The National Archives provides a great deal of additional information about the electoral process, including data from the 2000 election and answers to Frequently Asked Questions. For a full explanation of the process, please read the procedural guide to the electoral college and the answers to frequently asked questions. If you're interested in the issue of faithless electors, see the outline of State Laws and Requirements for electors.
- Project Vote Smart offers a detailed but less formal explanation of the electoral process, with dates for the 2004 election. If the National Archives' website seems a bit stuffy to you, try Project Vote Smart first.
- The ultimate source, of course, is the U.S. Constitution itself. See Article 2, Section 1 and Amendment XII for the legal text.
When you're finished, put away all of your reading material (including this handout) and write a one-paragraph summary, in your own words, of how the electoral college works. Really write it out — don't just think about it! You may find, when you try to write it down, that you don't understand it as well as you thought you did. If that happens, go back and re-read the materials. Because it's organized by Frequently Asked Questions, the National Archives' website may be most helpful for this.
II. Why not a popular vote? (an historical perspective)
When we're debating whether some aspect of the Constitution makes sense, it's useful sometimes to think of the Constitution as an experiment — as a work in progress. Some of its original framers referred to it that way, as a Great Experiment in democracy. In 1787, no republic like the United States existed anywhere in the world. The "founding fathers" were making things up as they went along, looking at history, philosophy, and what they did and didn't like about existing governments in Europe and America. And not all of them agreed — in fact, many of them disagreed completely, even on important issues such as how much power the people should have.
The electoral college was a compromise on two important issues. The first was how much power the people should have, and the second was how much power small and large states should have.
