Weeks after Election Day, attention turns to the Electoral College and its members who are responsible for formally electing the next president. "When we go to vote for president in November, we are not actually voting for president. You are casting your ballot for the electors of that person," said Gayle Alberda, an assistant professor of politics at Fairfield University."It used to be a little clear on our ballots where it said, you're voting for the electors of, you know, Joe Biden or the electors of Donald Trump. Our ballots don't say that anymore," said Matthew Weil, the director of the Elections Project for the Bipartisan Policy Center.The Founding Fathers debated how the country's presidents should be picked either by Congress or by a national popular vote. The Electoral College was created as a compromise between the two."It was supposed to be a time where the electors got together and really made sure and debated and discussed the winner of that election to make sure that indeed that was the person that would be right for the nation," said Alberda.The Electoral College physically casting their ballots is more of a formality today, but the Constitution still determines how the process works. The number of votes each state gets is based on the number of representatives they have in Congress. Washington D.C., also gets three electoral vote. With 538 votes available, that makes 270 the magic number. Federal law does not dictate how states award their electoral votes. Forty-eight states and Washington D.C. have a winner-take-all system. Nebraska and Maine are the two exceptions, though it's rare for either to split its vote total.The state electors meet on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December to cast their votes. This year, that's December 14. "In most states, there are two sets of electors one for the Democratic candidate, one for the Republican candidate. And which slate of electors has to show up at the state capitol is determined by the announcement of who won the popular vote in that state," said Steven Smith, a professor of political science at Washington University in St. Louis."So the electors are generally picked by the campaigns or the state parties. They are traditionally loyalists to the parties. They are longtime members of the party," said Weil.Because electors are usually loyal to the political party they're representing, it's rare for one of them to vote for someone other than the designated party nominee."A faithless elector is that stray soul who decides that even though they were chosen to vote for this candidate or that candidate, they're going to choose someone else. Maybe another person or maybe some hero or whatever. They're making a political statement," said Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School.We've seen "faithless electors" in a handful previous Electoral College votes, but those votes have never impacted the final outcome of the presidential race. Once the Electoral College ballots are cast, those votes are sent to Washington D.C. The final step will happen when Congress formally counts and accepts those ballots on Jan. 6, 2021.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Voters cast their ballots for president more than a month ago, but the votes that officially matter will be cast Monday. That's when the Electoral College meets.
The Constitution gives the electors the power to choose the president, and when all the votes are counted Monday, President-elect Joe Biden is expected to have 306 electoral votes, more than the 270 needed to elect a president, to 232 votes for President Donald Trump.
The spotlight on the process is even greater this year because Trump has refused to concede the election and continued to make baseless allegations of fraud. That makes the meeting of the Electoral College another solid, undeniable step toward Inauguration Day on Jan. 20, when Biden will be sworn in as president.
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Some questions and answers about the Electoral College:
WHAT EXACTLY IS THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE?
In drafting the Constitution, America's founders struggled with how the new nation should choose its leader and ultimately created the Electoral College system. It was a compromise between electing the president by popular vote and having Congress choose the president.
Under the Constitution, states get a number of electors equal to their total number of seats in Congress: two senators plus however many members the state has in the House of Representatives. With the exception of Maine and Nebraska, states award all of their electoral college votes to the winner of the popular vote in their state.
WHAT'S THE BEEF WITH THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE?
The Electoral College has been the subject of criticism for more than two centuries. One often-repeated gripe: the person who wins the popular vote can nonetheless lose the presidential election. That happened twice in the last two decades — in 2000 with the election of George W. Bush and in 2016 when Donald Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million votes.
Biden, for his part, won the popular vote and will end up with 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232. Trump was the fifth presidential candidate in American history to have lost the popular vote but won in the Electoral College.
WHO ARE THE ELECTORS?
Presidential electors typically are elected officials, political hopefuls or longtime party loyalists.
This year, they include South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Trump elector who could be a 2024 Republican presidential candidate, and Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams, her party’s 2018 nominee for governor and a key player in Biden's win in the state.
Among others are 93-year-old Paul “Pete” McCloskey, a Biden elector who is a former Republican congressman who challenged Richard Nixon for the 1972 GOP presidential nomination on a platform opposing the Vietnam War; Floridian Maximo Alvarez, an immigrant from Cuba who worried in his Republican convention speech that anarchy and communism would overrun Biden's America, and Muhammad Abdurrahman, a Minnesotan who tried to cast his electoral vote for Sen. Bernie Sanders instead of Hillary Clinton in 2016.
WHERE DO THEY MEET AND WHAT DO THEY DO?
The Electoral College doesn't meet in one place. Instead, each state's electors and the electors for the District of Columbia meet in a place chosen by their legislature, usually the state capitol.
The election is low tech. Electors cast their votes by paper ballot: one ballot for president and one for vice president. The votes get counted and the electors sign six certificates with the results. Each certificate gets paired with a certificate from the governor detailing the state's vote totals.
Those six packets then get mailed to various people specified by law. The most important copy, though, gets sent to the president of the Senate, the current vice president. This is the copy that will be officially counted later.
DO ELECTORS HAVE TO VOTE FOR THE CANDIDATE WHO WON THEIR STATE?
In 32 states and the District of Columbia, laws require electors to vote for the popular-vote winner. The Supreme Court unanimously upheld this arrangement in July. Electors almost always vote for the state winner anyway, because they generally are devoted to their political party.
A bit of an exception happened in 2016 when 10 electors tried to vote for other candidates. Those included people pledged to support Clinton who decided not to back her in a futile bid to get Republican electors to abandon Trump and choose someone else as president.
Abdurrahman, the Minnesotan who wanted to vote for Sanders, was replaced as an elector. This year, he has said he will cast his vote for Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
Once the electoral votes are cast, they are sent to Congress, where both houses will convene on Jan. 6 for a session presided over by Vice President Mike Pence. The envelopes from each state and the District of Columbia will be opened and the votes tallied.
If at least one member of each house objects in writing to some electoral votes, the House and Senate meet separately to debate the issue. Both houses must vote to sustain the objection for it to matter, and the Democratic-led House is unlikely to go along with any objections to votes for Biden. Otherwise, the votes get counted as intended by the states.
And then there's one more step: inauguration.
17 things to know about the Electoral College
17 things to know about the Electoral College
17 things to know about the electoral college
The Electoral College plays a major role in America'ss democracy and millions of voters will see it at work again on Election Day, Nov. 3. Learn more about the history and inner workings of the Electoral College here.
History
Article II, Section I of The Constitution outlines the executive branch of government, which includes the Electoral College. "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector," the Constitution says.
Why does the Electoral College exist?
The Electoral College was born as part of a compromise between members of the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. As the National Archives notes in Prologue Magazine, "some delegates wanted Congress to choose the president, but that would have upset the balance of power among the three branches of government. Others called for direct popular vote, but that would have left the decision in the hands of ill-informed voters who knew little about politicians outside their home state." So a compromise was made, and the Electoral College was formed. Also weighing into the decision was the Southern states' desire to wield as much power as the Northern states despite having far fewer eligible voters. According to History, at the time, 40% of people living in the Southern states were slaves, who didn't have the right to vote. But the Electoral College allowed the slave states to count each slave as three-fifths of a person, boosting the South's population, and therefore its number of electoral votes.
How the Electoral College works
According to USA.gov, once the popular vote for each state gets tallied, the winner gets the vote of each state's electors. The number of electors a state has is equal to the amount of Congressional representation for the state (number of House seats plus two Senate seats). California has the largest number of electoral votes with 55 electors in the state, while Alaska, Delaware, Washington, D.C., Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming have the fewest, with each state having three electoral votes.
Number of electors
The Electoral College consists of 538 electors from all 50 states plus Washington, D.C., and to win an election, a candidate must receive 270 or more electoral votes, which is equal to half the electoral votes plus one.
Census
The number of electors for each state is also based on the U.S. Census and carries through until the next census, according to information from the National Archives. Information from the previous census in 2010 informed the electoral makeup of the 2012, 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.
District System
According to the National Archives and the U.S. House of Representatives History, Art and Archives website, two states, Maine and Nebraska, employ a district-based system for determining how their electors vote. In this system, two electors vote for the candidate that carries the state’s popular vote and one votes for the candidate that carries each district’s popular vote. Since Nebraska and Maine have five and four electors respectively, this has led to some interesting electoral vote combinations in recent elections. According to FairVote.com, "the statewide winners have swept all of the state's districts in every election except 2008 and 2016. In 2008, Nebraska gave four of its electoral votes to John McCain, but Barack Obama won a single electoral vote from Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District. In 2016, Maine gave three of its electoral votes to Hillary Clinton, but Donald Trump won a single electoral vote in Maine's 2nd Congressional District."
Vote
The Electoral College meets to vote the Monday after the second Wednesday in December, which this year will be Dec. 14, 2020, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Results
The Electoral College results are counted and announced at 1 p.m. on Jan. 6. The vice president, who also leads the Senate, reads off the results from each state alphabetically. The results are then handed off to four tellers (two from the House and two from the Senate) and are then tallied. Once the final tallied results are handed back to the vice president, the candidate who receives 270 or more votes “shall be deemed a sufficient declaration of the persons, if any, elected President and Vice President.”
Results (continued)
According to the U.S. House of Representatives History, Art and Archives website, five sitting U.S. vice presidents have had to announce their own loss of the presidency while presiding over the Senate during the electoral vote count. Vice Presidents John C. Breckenridge (1861), Richard M. Nixon (1961), Hubert Humphrey (1969) and Al Gore (2000) all had to announce that they would not be assuming the nation’s highest office.
Nomination
The elector nomination process is specific to each state. For example, in Florida, the governor nominates the electors of each party while in other states like California, electors are nominated by the state political parties.
Electoral vote vs. popular vote
2016 may have been the most recent instance of a candidate winning the popular vote but losing the electoral vote, but it isn't the only year that happened. That same scenario occurred in 1824 (Andrew Jackson lost the Electoral College to John Quincy Adams), 1876 (Samuel Tilden lost to Rutherford B. Hayes), 1888 (Grover Cleveland lost to Benjamin Harrison) and 2000 (Al Gore lost to George W. Bush). According to an article in The Guardian, the results of the 2016 election were able to happen, in part, because populations in large cities are becoming more diverse, causing Democratic votes to be needlessly spent in states that lean heavily liberal, while less diverse Republican voters are more spread out in rural areas across the country.
Challenges
Members of the Senate can challenge electoral votes as they are announced. Once a challenge is presented in writing by “at least one member each of the House and the Senate,” the houses separately argue the challenge and vote to accept or reject it. “An objection to a state’s electoral vote must be approved by both houses in order for any contested votes to be excluded,” according to The Electoral College: A 2020 Presidential Election Timeline.
Faithless electors
Though electors typically vote for the candidate that wins the popular vote, according to FairVote, on occasion, electors defect from the group. These are called “faithless electors,” and while they’ve never thrown an election, they’ve still made a stark statement. The largest amounts of faithless votes were the 63 votes distributed amongst the remaining candidates (Thomas A. Hendricks, Benjamin G. Brown, Charles J. Jenkins and David Davis) after the untimely death of Ulysses S. Grant’s Liberal Republican opponent Horace Greeley in the election of 1872, according to The Library of Congress.
Faithless electors (continued)
Each state has a different process for nominating electors and for holding these electors accountable for voting for the candidate selected. Some states require electors to sign pledges to vote for the choice while others, like Montana, cancel the vote of a faithless elector and replace them, according to FairVote. Other states, like South Carolina and California, have instituted fines, imprisonment or criminal convictions for faithless votes.
Membership
The Electoral College is made up of a diverse set of electors, some more well known than others. According to Politico, President Bill Clinton, the husband of two-time presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, was an elector in 2016, as was Christine Pelosi, the daughter of current Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi. One elector was even a college student — Michael Banerian was a senior at Oakland University and a Republican elector during the 2016 election and reportedly received death threats prior to the Electoral College meeting, according to Politico.
Changes to the Electoral College
The last official change to the Electoral College was in 1804 when separate ballots were approved for president and vice presidents with the passage of the 12th amendment. Prior to this, electors voted for two candidates, regardless of party affiliation, and the person with the largest quantity of votes was elected president, while the runner-up became vice president. Washington, D.C. didn't have three electors until 1961 and the last proposed change to the Electoral College - to directly elect the president and vice president and only require a runoff if neither candidate got 40% of the vote - was introduced in 1969 but failed to pass the Senate, according to National Archives and the U.S. House of Representatives History, Art and Archives.
Popular vote
A number of changes to the Electoral College process have been proposed. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, a number of states wanted to revert to the district system after the 2000 election. These days, another system, the National Popular Vote (NPV) system has garnered some attention. Under this system, states would give all of their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the national popular vote, regardless of the state popular outcome. Currently, there are 16 jurisdictions (possessing 196 electoral votes) that have enacted the NPV voting system, including Colorado, New York and California. However, the system will not go into effect until the endorsing states total 270 electoral votes — enough to decide the election.
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