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The Electoral College Explained

A national popular vote would help ensure that every vote counts equally, making American democracy more representative.

• Electoral College Reform

In the United States, the presidency is decided not by the national popular vote but by the Electoral College — an outdated and convoluted system that sometimes yields results contrary to the choice of the majority of American voters. On five occasions, including in two of the last six elections, candidates have won the Electoral College, and thus the presidency, despite losing the nationwide popular vote. 

The Electoral College has racist origins — when established, it applied the three-fifths clause, which gave a long-term electoral advantage to slave states in the South — and continues to dilute the political power of voters of color. It incentivizes presidential campaigns to focus on a relatively small number of “swing states.” Together, these dynamics have spurred debate about the system’s democratic legitimacy.

To make the United States a more representative democracy, reformers are pushing for the presidency to be decided instead by the national popular vote, which would help ensure that every voter counts equally.

What is the Electoral College and how does it work?

The Electoral College is a group of intermediaries designated by the Constitution to select the president and vice president of the United States. Each of the 50 states is allocated presidential electors  equal to the number of its representatives and senators . The ratification of the 23rd Amendment in 1961 allowed citizens in the District of Columbia to participate in presidential elections as well; they have consistently had three electors.

In total, the Electoral College comprises  538 members . A presidential candidate must win a majority of the electoral votes cast to win — at least 270 if all 538 electors vote.

The Constitution grants state legislatures the power to decide how to appoint their electors. Initially, a number of state legislatures directly  selected their electors , but during the 19th century they transitioned to the popular vote, which is now used by  all 50 states . In other words, each awards its electoral votes to the presidential candidate chosen by the state’s voters.

Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia use a winner-take-all system, awarding all of their electoral votes to the popular vote winner in the state. Maine and Nebraska award one electoral vote to the popular vote winner in each of their congressional districts and their remaining two electoral votes to the statewide winner. Under this system, those two states sometimes split their electoral votes among candidates.

In the months leading up to the general election, the political parties in each state typically nominate their own slates of would-be electors. The state’s popular vote determines which party’s slates will be made electors. Members of the Electoral College  meet and vote in their respective states  on the Monday after the second Wednesday in December after Election Day. Then, on January 6, a joint session of Congress meets at the Capitol to count the electoral votes and declare the outcome of the election, paving the way for the presidential inauguration on January 20.

How was the Electoral College established?

The Constitutional Convention in 1787 settled on the Electoral College as a compromise between delegates who thought Congress should select the president and others who favored a direct nationwide popular vote. Instead, state legislatures were entrusted with appointing electors.

Article II  of the Constitution, which established the executive branch of the federal government, outlined the framers’ plan for the electing the president and vice president. Under this plan, each elector cast two votes for president; the candidate who received the most votes became the president, with the second-place finisher becoming vice president — which led to administrations in which political opponents served in those roles. The process was overhauled in 1804 with the ratification of the  12th Amendment , which required electors to cast votes separately for president and vice president. 

How did slavery shape the Electoral College?

At the time of the Constitutional Convention, the northern states and southern states had  roughly equal populations . However, nonvoting enslaved people made up about one-third of the southern states’ population. As a result, delegates from the South objected to a direct popular vote in presidential elections, which would have given their states less electoral representation.

The debate contributed to the convention’s eventual decision to establish the Electoral College, which applied the  three-fifths compromise  that had already been devised for apportioning seats in the House of Representatives. Three out of five enslaved people were counted as part of a state’s total population, though they were nonetheless prohibited from voting.

Wilfred U. Codrington III, an assistant professor of law at Brooklyn Law School and a Brennan Center fellow,  writes  that the South’s electoral advantage contributed to an “almost uninterrupted trend” of presidential election wins by southern slaveholders and their northern sympathizers throughout the first half of the 19th century. After the Civil War, in 1876, a contested Electoral College outcome was settled by a compromise in which the House awarded Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency with the understanding that he would withdraw military forces from the Southern states. This led to the end of Reconstruction and paved the way for racial segregation under Jim Crow laws.

Today, Codrington argues, the Electoral College continues to dilute the political power of Black voters: “Because the concentration of black people is highest in the South, their preferred presidential candidate is virtually assured to lose their home states’ electoral votes. Despite black voting patterns to the contrary, five of the six states whose populations are 25 percent or more black have been reliably red in recent presidential elections. … Under the Electoral College, black votes are submerged.”

What are faithless electors?  

Ever since the 19th century reforms, states have expected their electors to honor the will of the voters. In other words, electors are now pledged to vote for the winner of the popular vote in their state. However, the Constitution does not require them to do so, which allows for scenarios in which “faithless electors” have voted against the popular vote winner in their states. As of 2016, there have been  90 faithless electoral votes  cast out of 23,507 in total across all presidential elections. The 2016 election saw a record-breaking  seven faithless electors , including three who voted for former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was not a presidential candidate at the time.  

Currently, 33 states and the District of Columbia  require their presidential electors  to vote for the candidate to whom they are pledged. Only 5 states, however, impose a penalty on faithless electors, and only 14 states provide for faithless electors to be removed or for their votes to be canceled. In July 2020, the Supreme Court  unanimously upheld  existing state laws that punish or remove faithless electors.

What happens if no candidate wins a majority of Electoral College votes?

If no ticket wins a majority of Electoral College votes, the presidential election is  sent to the House of Representatives  for a runoff. Unlike typical House practice, however, each state only gets one vote, decided by the party that controls the state’s House delegation. Meanwhile, the vice-presidential race is decided in the Senate, where each member has one vote. This scenario  has not transpired since 1836 , when the Senate was tasked with selecting the vice president after no candidate received a majority of electoral votes.

Are Electoral College votes distributed equally between states?

Each state is allocated a number of electoral votes based on the total size of its congressional delegation. This benefits smaller states, which have at least three electoral votes — including two electoral votes tied to their two Senate seats, which are guaranteed even if they have a small population and thus a small House delegation. Based on population trends, those disparities will likely increase as the most populous states are expected to account for an even greater share of the U.S. population in the decades ahead. 

What did the 2020 election reveal about the Electoral College?

In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential race, Donald Trump and his allies fueled an effort to overturn the results of the election, spreading repeated lies about widespread voter fraud. This included attempts by a number of state legislatures to nullify some of their states’ votes, which often targeted jurisdictions with large numbers of Black voters. Additionally, during the certification process for the election, some members of Congress also objected to the Electoral College results, attempting to throw out electors from certain states. While these efforts ultimately failed, they revealed yet another vulnerability of the election system that stems from the Electoral College.

The  Electoral Count Reform Act , enacted in 2023, addresses these problems. Among other things, it clarifies which state officials have the power to appoint electors, and it bars any changes to that process after Election Day, preventing state legislatures from setting aside results they do not like. The new law also raises the threshold for consideration of objections to electoral votes. It is now one-fifth of each chamber instead of one senator and one representative.  Click here for more on the changes made by the Electoral Count Reform Act.

What are ways to reform the Electoral College to make presidential elections more democratic?

Abolishing the Electoral College outright would require a constitutional amendment. As a workaround, scholars and activist groups have rallied behind the  National Popular Vote Interstate Compact  (NPV), an effort that started after the 2000 election. Under it, participating states would  commit to awarding their electoral votes  to the winner of the national popular vote.

In other words, the NPV would formally retain the Electoral College but render it moot, ensuring that the winner of the national popular vote also wins the presidency. If enacted, the NPV would incentivize presidential candidates to expand their campaign efforts nationwide, rather than focus only on a small number of swing states.

For the NPV to take effect, it must first be adopted by states that control at least 270 electoral votes. In 2007, Maryland became the first state to enact the compact. As of 2019, a total of 19 states and Washington, DC, which collectively account for 196 electoral votes, have joined.

The public has consistently supported a nationwide popular vote. A 2020 poll by Pew Research Center, for example, found that  58 percent of adults  prefer a system in which the presidential candidate who receives the most votes nationwide wins the presidency.

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Feature   Apr 17, 2024

The Electoral College: What’s to be Done

During an opening panel at an Ash Center symposium on the future of the Electoral College, scholars examined the history behind how the US adopted its peculiar centuries-old system of choosing presidential election winners – and what should be done to reform or even abolish the practice today.

Reimagining Democracy Program

Democratic Reform

Below are excerpts from the opening panel of   Electoral College Symposium: What’s to be Done ? A recording of the panel can be   found here.

Danielle Allen, Harvard Kennedy School

“One of the biggest challenges of tackling this question of the Electoral College is the fact that we’re doing so at a point in time when it’s definitely broken. It’s dysfunctional because the size of the House of Representatives was capped a hundred years ago. And so the Electoral College and the House both should have grown consistently over time as the population grew. The consequence of this is that the weighting, the relative balance between small states and big states has changed over time. Hence the increasing frequency of the divergence between the popular vote and the electoral college vote — that is a real problem.”

“So they got to a solution once, which was electoral college and they locked in a deal for how they were going to divvy up power and we’re stuck with it…So that’s why again, the issue comes back to the state of states in our politics. Do they still in fact represent groups of people with some kind of meaningful shared interest? That doesn’t mean they all have to vote the same way.”

Alex Keyssar, Harvard Kennedy School

“There have been an enormous number of efforts to get rid of the Electoral College order or to reform it. And they date back to 1802, maybe even a little bit earlier.”

“There have been more than a thousand amendments introduced into Congress to get rid of or reform the Electoral College more than on any other subject in American history. Notably, some of the most important advocates of a national popular vote in Congress, probably a majority of the most important advocates have been from small states.

“This was not New York trying to ride rough shot over North Dakota. In fact, in the 1940s, the leading champion of a national popular vote was from North Dakota. But what made a national popular vote impossible to pass or difficult to pass, and really a non-starter for most of our history was racial supremacy, was white supremacy in the South…Southern states would have lost a lot of weight in presidential elections if there was a popular vote, because if there’s a popular vote — only voters count, not the three-fifths of African-Americans who count towards electoral votes but don’t vote. So you would eliminate that strength in the South.”

“After the Civil War and the brief period of Reconstruction when white supremacy is restored to the South, at that point in effect, white Southerners benefited from what you could call the ‘five fifths clause.’ African-Americans counted a hundred percent towards representation and Congress and towards electoral votes, but they didn’t vote at all. So in fact, the South was advantaged by this, and the South would have lost a great deal of influence in presidential elections if there had been a switch to a national popular vote from the electoral college system, which gave them weight and power regardless of the narrowness of the franchise that they offered.

“But what’s notable from the historical record is that the times that we have come closest to Electoral College reform were times when the party systems were in flux. During the 1810s and 1820s, there’s only one party, the Republican Party, that’s four different factions or five different factions. But the Federalists had disappeared. There was no sort of simple partisan dichotomizing of the political system. And the second time, the 1969 episode that I was referring to is also a period when I would argue there was really no effective two-party system. The party system was in flux, southern whites were leaving the Democratic Party and entering the Republican Party…. So party flux seems to open up space for possible Electoral College reform.”

George C. Edwards III, Texas A&M University and the University of Oxford

“We can all agree that the Electoral College violates political equality….  by favoring some citizens over others, depending solely upon the state in which they cast their votes for president. And of course that allows the candidate who comes in second in the popular vote to win the election — and these consequences are indisputable. It’s simple arithmetic.”

“The question becomes, does the electoral college offer compensations for violating the most deeply ingrained democratic principles? Now, defenders of the electoral college say that it does, that it provides important benefits to the American policy and that it protects the nation from the dire consequences of direct election of the president. It is important to note that defenders of electoral college virtually never engage in rigorous arguments or offer systematic evidence on behalf of their claims. Instead, they make unsupported assertions, which unfortunately have been accepted by many people. So if we’re effectively to advocate reform, it’s crucial that we have answers to their claims.”

“Some argue that we should simply defer to the isdom of the Framers, in effect, including they knew what they were doing when they established the Electoral College. They were wise men. Whereas there were only men and therefore, and of discussion. But of course we now know that that’s nonsense.”

“The Electoral College does not prevent tyranny of the majority. Instead it provides the potential for tyranny of the minority. Now the electoral college is organized by state and you might think, well, it’s essential element of American federalism as defenders of Electoral College claim. But the Electoral College is not a federal principle. The founders never discuss it, not once, not one sentence.”

Excerpts have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Watch the Recording

Electoral College Symposium: What’s to be Done?

Apr 3, 2024

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A Growing Number Of Critics Raise Alarms About The Electoral College

Mara Liasson

Then-Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi preside over a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6 to certify the 2020 Electoral College results after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol earlier that day. Erin Schaff/Pool/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Then-Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi preside over a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6 to certify the 2020 Electoral College results after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol earlier that day.

It's hard to make an intellectual argument in favor of the Electoral College. Most people feel that the person who gets the most votes should become president.

After all, that's how we run every other election in this country, says Jesse Wegman, the author of Let the People Pick the President .

"If anything, representative democracy in the 21st century is about political equality. It's about one person, one vote — everybody's vote counting equally," he said. "You're not going to convince a majority of Americans that that's not how you should do it."

Another way the Electoral College is unfair, says Harvard University political scientist Gautam Mukunda, is that each state gets electors based on its representation in the House and Senate, which means small states get extra votes.

"The fact that in presidential elections people in Wyoming have [nearly four] times the power of people in California is antithetical at the most basic level to what we say we stand for as a democracy," he said.

But Brad Smith, who used to be on the Federal Election Commission, disagrees.

Sure, the election may be decided by just a handful of states — swing states that can shift red or blue. But Smith, a Republican, says the battleground is diverse.

"Those states include some of the states with the heaviest minority populations in the United States, some of the states with the fewest minority populations in the United States," he said. "They include states from every region of the country, and that forces candidates to try to go out and have a platform that will appeal to the huge, diverse sections of America — or at least not grossly turn them off."

And Smith points out that for most of American history, the Electoral College amplified the popular vote, rather than contradicting it.

"Our calculus might change if pretty much every single election, you know, the person who won the most popular votes wasn't winning," he said.

The problem is that twice since 2000, the person with the most votes didn't win. Both times — in 2000 and 2016 — it was the Republican candidate who got fewer votes but ended up in the White House.

And even when that doesn't happen, Wegman sees another problem with the Electoral College system.

"In 2020, despite the 7 million-vote victory that Joe Biden won in the popular vote, people overlook the fact that 45,000 votes switch in the three key battleground states, and you're looking at a second term of Donald Trump," he said. "I mean, the fact that you could have the entire outcome of the election ride on 45,000 votes in three random states is, you know, just a huge, glaring vulnerability for any republic."

"Undue" weight of key states

That vulnerability was on full display on Jan. 6, when Trump and the violent insurrectionists pressed Congress to overturn Biden's Electoral College win. Without the Electoral College, it would have been much harder for them to have asked Congress to overturn the will of 7 million voters. Instead, Trump asked Congress to throw out the electoral votes from just a handful of battleground states.

That means the Electoral College puts a magnifying glass on just a few states that could have tremendous control over presidential elections.

"The Electoral College does mean a small number of states have undue weight in the outcome of our elections and that smaller manipulations can have broad national consequences," said Wendy Weiser, vice president for democracy at New York University's Brennan Center for Justice, which advocates for expanded ballot access.

What she means by manipulations are the efforts by Republicans to change election laws in their favor.

"Vote suppression is one way of doing that — subtracting voters from the electorate who you think won't vote for your preferred candidates," she said. "But this new trend of actually taking over the machinery of elections and giving themselves the power to run things or make decisions or count the votes is another way of doing this."

Republican state lawmakers in places like Georgia and Texas have advanced bills that would give new powers to legislatures to fire election officials and overturn elections.

Democrats don't have the votes in the states or in Congress to stop these laws, so Democrats are trying to build public pressure against them. Republicans say their goal is to fight future election fraud. The 2020 election was declared the most secure ever, but Trump continues to push the lie that the election was stolen from him.

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On the other hand, Republicans don't have to convince the public. They have the votes to pass ballot restrictions, and in some cases they have never held public hearings.

"This is the essence of the minority-rule position, right?" Harvard's Mukunda said. "You don't have to convince the public that the system is fair. You just have to convince them that it's not so unfair they should overthrow the system."

And for Republicans, the system, with all its minoritarian features — the Electoral College, the U.S. Senate , the filibuster , partisan gerrymandering — is, at least for now, working in their favor. But maybe it's not good for democracy when one party doesn't have to try to win the most votes in a presidential election.

A warning from Republicans

Smith says this is something fellow Republicans should consider.

"They keep losing the aggregated popular vote," he said. "Republicans aren't getting enough votes, and that's why they're losing most presidential elections. And, you know, they need to think about, how do we appeal to more people?"

In the runup to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, 12 House Republicans issued an extraordinary statement that warned about the demise of the Electoral College.

"Republican presidential candidates have won the national popular vote only once in the last 32 years," it stated. The signers then implored their colleagues not to vote to reject the electors from battleground states, as Trump was asking them to do.

"Even looking at it from a narrow partisan lens, this process or that objection was potentially imperiling the Electoral College," said Michigan Rep. Peter Meijer, one of the Republicans who signed the letter.

And that would be a bad thing for Republicans, because they depend on the Electoral College. As the statement said: "We will be delegitimizing the very system that led Donald Trump to victory in 2016, and that could provide the only path to victory in 2024."

Correction June 10, 2021

An earlier version of this story included a misspoken quote that said people in Wyoming have 44 times the power of people in California in presidential elections. In fact, people in Wyoming have nearly four times the power of people in California.

Electoral College

What is the Electoral College?

The Electoral College is a process, not a place. The Founding Fathers established it in the Constitution, in part, as a compromise between the election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens.

What is the process?

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.

How many electors are there? How are they distributed among the States?

The Electoral College consists of 538 electors. A majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect the President. Your State has the same number of electors as it does Members in its Congressional delegation: one for each Member in the House of Representatives plus two Senators. Read more about the allocation of electoral votes.

The District of Columbia is allocated 3 electors and treated like a State for purposes of the Electoral College under the 23rd Amendment of the Constitution. For this reason, in the following discussion, the word “State” also refers to the District of Columbia and “Executive” to the State Governors and the Mayor of the District of Columbia.

How are my electors chosen? What are their qualifications? How do they decide who to vote for?

Each candidate running for President in your State has their own group of electors (known as a slate). The slates are generally chosen by the candidate’s political party in your State, but State laws vary on how the electors are selected and what their responsibilities are. Read more about the qualifications of the electors and restrictions on who the electors may vote for .

What happens in the general election? Why should I vote?

The general election is held every four years on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. When you vote for a Presidential candidate you are actually voting for your candidate's preferred electors. Learn more about voting for the electors.

Most States have a “winner-take-all” system that awards all electors to the Presidential candidate who wins the State's popular vote. However, Maine and Nebraska each have a variation of “proportional representation.” Read more about the allocation of electors among the States.

What happens after the general election?

After the general election, your State's Executive prepares a Certificate of Ascertainment listing the names of all the individuals on the slates for each candidate. The Certificate of Ascertainment also lists the number of votes each individual received and shows which individuals were appointed as your State's electors. Your State’s Certificate of Ascertainment is sent to NARA as part of the official records of the Presidential election.

The meeting of the electors takes place on the first Tuesday after the second Wednesday in December after the general 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 Certificate of Vote is sent to Congress, where the votes are counted, and to NARA, as part of the official records of the Presidential election.

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 count of electoral votes. The Vice President of the United States, as President of the Senate, presides over the count in a strictly ministerial manner 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 general election.

Opinion: The Electoral College Picks a U.S. President and Shows Us Why We Need It

By Ian Drake Montclair State Associate Professor of Political Science and Law

Posted in: Faculty Voices , University

Note:  This Op-Ed was published on NJ.com  on Monday, Dec. 14, 2020.

President-Elect Joe Biden, who won the Electoral College vote and the popular vote in November, is set to formally defeat Donald Trump 306 to 232, today, Dec. 14, when the electors cast their votes in the Electoral College.

Just four years ago, Trump received a similar number of Electoral College votes — 304 to 227 — to win White House despite losing the popular vote because in our system, it’s the Electoral votes that count.

So what makes the electoral votes so important, and why do they decide who leads our country?

Critics of the Electoral College – and there have been many, as it is the constitutional provision most frequently targeted for reform or abolition – have contended that its chief fault is that it is anti-democratic and does not reflect the will of the people. But this could not be further from the truth. In fact, the Electoral College furthers the democratic participation of the American people by truly nationalizing the presidential election, preserving the two-party system, and ensuring the role of the states in selecting the President.

In the summer of 1787, when the Founders met in Philadelphia, one of the first items for reform was the structure of the national government. The executive power under the Articles of Confederation had been conducted by committees of Congressional representatives. But the Founders, greatly influenced by the writings of the French jurist and political philosopher Baron de Montesquieu, wanted a separation of governmental powers in order to prevent a too-powerful national government, which they feared would be tyrannical.

The executive power, which is the power to carry into effect – execute – the laws, was quickly conceived of as an office for one person, rather than a committee. It was assumed the executive, or presidency, would need to act with dispatch regarding enforcement questions, especially those dealing with foreign relations.

Instead of selecting the President through a national popular vote, the Founders decided upon what we have come to know as the Electoral College, although this term is not used in the Constitution. The College functions as a filtered way of electing the President. Slates of party activists are chosen by their states to be electors who officially vote for President after voters in the states have voted.

Why the need for a filtered vote? The Founders thought only people of the best character should be president and they thought the most prominent people in the various states – those who would serve as electors – would know who had the best character in the states suited to the job and would vote accordingly.

The Electoral College has not evolved to function in the way the Founders envisioned, however. Instead of prominent people as electors, party activists fill these positions. But they reflect the will of voters in the states. The winner of the electoral votes from each state is the winner of the popular vote in each state. (Nebraska and Maine have a slightly different system, wherein the electoral votes are allocated partly by congressional district and partly by state-wide popular vote results.) The key element is the role of the states (and Washington, D.C.) in 51 popular votes at the state level.

The state-based system ensures that campaigns are run on a national scale, rather than a regional one. Each election cycle, there are different “swing states” (states that are necessary to win the 270 electoral votes needed to win but where no clear candidate preference is assured) and they change as the populations change.

If we had a national popular vote system, then candidates would simply go where their voter bases are located. For Republicans this would be in the rural and suburban areas, while Democrats would campaign in cities. Not only would candidates gravitate to their geographic voter regions, they would also likely become more extreme in their positions. Under the Electoral College system the appeals to swing states require candidates to moderate their messages in order to appeal to the voters in swing states.

Finally, if we switched to deciding elections based on a national popular vote, we would likely diminish or even destroy the two-party system. Our parties are organized around a handful of leaders and whomever is president is the de facto leader of their party. If a national popular vote were instituted, then multiple candidates would be incentivized to run as a regional favorite and, without an Electoral College threshold to meet, they could win without a majority of popular votes. Such divided presidential races would likely weaken the parties and encourage regional parties or issue-based parties and coalition governments.

The Electoral College is not a strange historical anachronism. It is a selection system that reduces political extremism, nationalizes presidential campaigns, preserves the popular vote at the state level, and protects the two-party system nationally. Although it does not function quite as the Founders envisioned, it maintains our liberties by preserving our republican form of limited government.

Montclair State Associate Professor Ian J. Drake appears as an expert in an  Amazon Prime documentary titled “Safeguard: An Electoral College Story, ” about the Electoral College’s role in the American political system, historically and today.

Electoral College Pros and Cons

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The Electoral College system , long a source of controversy, came under especially heavy criticism after the 2016 presidential election when Republican Donald Trump lost the nationwide popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton by over 2.8 million votes but won the Electoral College—and thus the presidency—by 74 electoral votes .

• Gives the smaller states an equal voice.
• Prevents disputed outcomes ensuring a peaceful transition of power
• Reduces the costs of national presidential campaigns.
• Can disregard the will of the majority.
• Gives too few states too much electoral power.
• Reduces voter participation by creating a “my vote doesn’t matter” feeling.

By its very nature, the Electoral College system is confusing . When you vote for a presidential candidate, you are actually voting for a group of electors from your state who have all “pledged” to vote for your candidate. Each state is allowed one elector for each of its Representatives and Senators in Congress. There are currently 538 electors, and to be elected, a candidate must get the votes of at least 270 electors.

The Obsolescence Debate

The Electoral College system was established by Article II of the U.S. Constitution in 1788. The Founding Fathers chose it as a compromise between allowing Congress to choose the president and having the president elected directly by the popular vote of the people. The Founders believed that most common citizens of the day were poorly educated and uninformed on political issues. Consequently, they decided that using the “proxy” votes of the well-informed electors would lessen the risk of “tyranny of the majority,” in which the voices of the minority are drowned out by those of the masses. Additionally, the Founders reasoned that the system would prevent states with larger populations from having an unequal influence on the election.

Critics, however, argue that Founder’s reasoning is no longer relevant as today’s voters are better-educated and have virtually unlimited access to information and to the candidates’ stances on the issues. In addition, while the Founders considered the electors as being “free from any sinister bias” in 1788, electors today are selected by the political parties and are usually “pledged” to vote for the party’s candidate regardless of their own beliefs.

Today, opinions on the future of the Electoral College range from protecting it as the basis of American democracy to abolishing it completely as an ineffective and obsolete system that may not accurately reflect the will of the people. What are some of the main advantages and disadvantages of the Electoral College?

Advantages of the Electoral College 

• Promotes fair regional representation: The Electoral College gives the small states an equal voice. If the president was elected by the popular vote alone, candidates would mold their platforms to cater to the more populous states. Candidates would have no desire to consider, for example, the needs of farmers in Iowa or commercial fishermen in Maine.
• Provides a clean-cut outcome: Thanks to the Electoral College, presidential elections usually come to a clear and undisputed end. There is no need for wildly expensive nationwide vote recounts. If a state has significant voting irregularities, that state alone can do a recount. In addition, the fact that a candidate must gain the support of voters in several different geographic regions promotes the national cohesion needed to ensure a peaceful transfer of power.
• Makes campaigns less costly: Candidates rarely spend much time—or money—campaigning in states that traditionally vote for their party’s candidates. For example, Democrats rarely campaign in liberal-leaning California, just as Republicans tend to skip the more conservative Texas. Abolishing the Electoral College could make America’s many campaign financing problems even worse.   

Disadvantages of the Electoral College  

• Can override the popular vote: In five presidential elections so far—1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016—a candidate lost the nationwide popular vote but was elected president by winning the Electoral College vote. This potential to override the “will of the majority” is often cited as the main reason to abolish the Electoral College.
• Gives the swing states too much power: The needs and issues of voters in the 14 swing states —those that have historically voted for both Republican and Democratic presidential candidates—get a higher level of consideration than voters in other states. The candidates rarely visit the predictable non-swing states, like Texas or California. Voters in the non-swing states will see fewer campaign ads and be polled for their opinions less often voters in the swing states. As a result, the swing states, which may not necessarily represent the entire nation, hold too much electoral power.
• Makes people feel their vote doesn’t matter: Under the Electoral College system, while it counts, not every vote “matters.” For example, a Democrat’s vote in liberal-leaning California has far less effect on the election’s final outcome that it would in one of the less predictable swing states like Pennsylvania, Florida, and Ohio. The resulting lack of interest in non-swing states contributes to America’s traditionally low voter turnout rate .

The Bottom Line

Abolishing the Electoral College would require a constitutional amendment , a lengthy and often unsuccessful process. However, there are proposals to “reform” the Electoral College without abolishing it. One such movement, the National Popular Vote plan would ensure that the winner of the popular vote would also win at least enough Electoral College votes to be elected president. Another movement is attempting to convince states to split their electoral vote based on the percentage of the state’s popular vote for each candidate. Eliminating the winner-take-all requirement of the Electoral College at the state level would lessen the tendency for the swing states to dominate the electoral process.

The Popular Vote Plan Alternative

As an alternative to the long and unlikely method amending the Constitution, critics of the Electoral College are now perusing the National Popular Vote plan designed to ensure that the candidate who wins the overall popular vote in inaugurated president.

Based on Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution granting the states the exclusive power to control how their electoral votes are awarded, the National Popular Vote plan requires the legislature of each participating state to enact a bill agreeing that the state will award all of its electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, regardless of the outcome of the popular vote in that specific state.

The National Popular Vote would go into effect when states controlling 270—a simple majority—of the total 538 electoral votes. As of July 2020, a National Popular Vote bill has been signed into law in 16 states controlling a total of 196 electoral votes, including 4 small states, 8 medium-sized states, 3 big states (California, Illinois, and New York), and the District of Columbia. Thus, the National Popular Vote plan will take effect when enacted by states controlling an additional 74 electoral votes.  

Sources and Further Reference

• “From Bullets to Ballots: The Election of 1800 and the First Peaceful Transfer of Political Power.” TeachingAmericanHistory.org , https://teachingamericanhistory.org/resources/zvesper/chapter1/.
• Hamilton, Alexander. “The Federalist Papers: No. 68 (The Mode of Electing the President).” congress.gov , Mar. 14, 1788, https://www.congress.gov/resources/display/content/The+Federalist+Papers#TheFederalistPapers-68.
• Meko, Tim. “How Trump won the presidency with razor-thin margins in swing states.” Washington Post (Nov. 11, 2016), https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/swing-state-margins/.
• The National Popular Vote Plan
• Reasons to Keep the Electoral College
• How the US Electoral College System Works
• What Happens if There Is a Tie in the Electoral College?
• Presidents Elected Without Winning the Popular Vote
• How Electoral Votes Are Awarded
• 12th Amendment: Fixing the Electoral College
• Who Invented the Electoral College?
• How many Electors does each State have?
• 2000 Presidential Election of George W. Bush vs. Al Gore
• How Many Electoral Votes Does a Candidate Need to Win?
• Swing States in the Presidential Election
• Learn How Many Total Electoral Votes There Are
• What Happens If the Presidential Election Is a Tie
• Purposes and Effects of the Electoral College
• Presidential Elections: ESL Lesson

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Opinion: Maine again takes the spotlight in Electoral College odyssey

The attention Maine is getting gives us a chance to revisit how we arrived here.

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Two recent Maine developments have once again put the state on the national stage when it comes to how the country elects its president.

The first came last month when the Legislature voted to join 16 states and the District of Columbia in the National Popular Vote Compact, an agreement by which the participating jurisdictions are pledged to casting their electoral votes for the winner in the national popular vote. That would happen even if the state involved voted for someone else.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Paul Mills is a Farmington attorney. He can be reached at [email protected]

The second was a movement by pro-Donald Trump activists to change Nebraska voting laws to restore the winner-take-all system of casting its Electoral College votes.  This has meant that, both in 2016 and 2020, Trump won only four of Nebraska’s five votes because Democrats carried one of its three districts. In these same elections, a Republican counterweight to this occurred here in Maine when Trump wound up with one of ours by carrying the 2nd Congressional District.

It was a move that stirred a response from Democrats in Maine – the only other state that has a proportional system – since such an effort would give the Republican Party a hammerlock on Nebraska electoral votes. To offset this, Maine House Democratic Leader Mo Terry vowed to do the same in Maine if the Trump effort in the Cornhusker state were successful. This move would likely offset the Trump move in Nebraska; the system we now have would be abrogated in favor of winner-take-all, in effect no longer putting the Trump-leaning 2nd Congressional District in play.

The attention Maine is getting in all this is an occasion to revisit how we arrived at our present destination.

In the first few decades of the 1800s, Maine – both as part of Massachusetts and then after achieving statehood in 1820 – was one of a few states that cast its electoral votes by congressional district. By the 1830s, this was generally abandoned in favor of the winner-take-all, or “at large,” approach. Advertisement

The razor-thin 1968 presidential election roused credible support for constitutional change. This was long advocated, for example, by Maine U.S. Sen. Margaret Chase Smith. In 1969, the U.S. House of Representatives took the biggest step ever taken along these lines, voting 339 to 70 to enact the Bayh-Celler Act, which would have replaced the Electoral College with the popular vote. The measure failed to overcome a Senate filibuster.

Against the backdrop of the same 1968 contest that seized interest at the national level, Maine in 1969 passed its own law designed to nudge the country in the direction of a popular vote. It provided for one vote allocated to the winner in each of the two congressional districts but with the remaining two going to the statewide winner. As former House Speaker John Martin recalled in an interview with this columnist, the bill was passed “with the assumption that other states would follow suit.”

So far, only Nebraska has done so. This it did in 1991.

Both the Maine and Nebraska laws have been commanding significant attention of late.

Maine’s landmark 1969 law was the brainchild of a 39-year old mill worker at Mattawamkeag’s Forster Manufacturing plant named S. Glenn Starbird Jr.

The Kingman Township Democrat, in his third term, was the sole sponsor of the bill. I first met Starbird at about this time. As a high school student who frequented State House deliberations, presidential politics were also likely more on his mind than that of the typical state legislator. That’s because the year before, along with seven other local Democratic leaders, he had won a random drawing to accompany presidential nominee Hubert Humphrey on a summer fishing trip in the Maine wilderness. Advertisement

Starbird’s paths and mine crossed from time to time over the ensuing years. The last such occasion was in 1987. We were both in Farmington working on separate projects at the registry of deeds.

At that time, I asked him across the street to my office for an informal visit. The walls were decorated with assorted memorabilia, and the item that most caught his attention was a poster promoting a 1947 lecture at Farmington State (now the University of Maine at Farmington) by “Famous Russian Democratic Statesman” Alexander Kerensky, then in exile in America since the overthrow of his regime in 1917. “I saw Kerensky speak at Orono that same week in 1947 when I was a student there,” Starbird recalled.

I have sometimes thought back on my last encounter with Starbird and this vicarious intersection between himself and Kerensky, both dedicated exponents of democratic procedures. My opportunity to pursue the subject further was lost on the occasion of his death from cancer in 1995 at the age of 66.

Starbird will never be remembered as much as either Margaret Chase Smith or Kerensky. His advancement of an election reform that is now seeing renewed national attention, however, is deservedly not forgotten.

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R.F.K. Jr. Draws Another $8 Million From His Running Mate, Nicole Shanahan

Ms. Shanahan, who has fueled Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign financially since becoming his running mate, has now poured nearly $15 million into the long-shot effort to elect him president.

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By Rebecca Davis O’Brien and Chris Cameron

Rebecca Davis O’Brien reported from Nashville, and Chris Cameron from Washington

• May 16, 2024 Updated 2:14 a.m. ET

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate, the Silicon Valley investor Nicole Shanahan, said on Wednesday night that she had given another $8 million to their independent presidential campaign as it carries out the expensive endeavor of gaining ballot access across the country and tries to propel Mr. Kennedy onto debate stages.

Ms. Shanahan’s new donation, which she announced at a comedy fund-raiser in Nashville, brings her total contribution to the campaign to $10 million, not including the $4 million she gave to a super PAC backing Mr. Kennedy to help pay for a Super Bowl advertisement early this year. Ms. Shanahan, a lawyer who was formerly married to the Google co-founder Sergey Brin, gave the campaign $2 million shortly after Mr. Kennedy named her as his running mate in March.

After a nod to the media, Ms. Shanahan said, “I think I know what they’re going to say — they’re going to say Bobby only picked me for my money,” a remark that drew laughter from the crowd.

Ms. Shanahan’s comments came near the end of a four-hour event at the storied Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. She followed performances by comedians including Russell Brand, Rob Schneider and Jim Breuer, a former “Saturday Night Live” cast member. Many of the performers praised Mr. Kennedy, but they also used their time onstage to rail against Covid vaccinations, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the mainstream news media and President Biden.

Ms. Shanahan’s personal wealth has been a significant asset for Mr. Kennedy. While campaign finance laws constrain individuals from donating more than $6,600 to a campaign, the candidates themselves can give unlimited sums of their own money.

Her cash has provided a financial lifeline as their campaign undertakes a costly effort to get on the ballot in all 50 states — which would be a challenging and expensive undertaking under any circumstances, even more so because the Democratic Party and its allies have pledged to mount legal challenges to the effort.

Ms. Shanahan made her announcement the same day that Mr. Biden and former President Donald J. Trump agreed to two debates , one on June 27 on CNN and another on Sept. 10 on ABC News. In doing so, they rejected the traditional Commission on Presidential Debates, which had hosted the events for decades.

Both candidates were seeking to keep Mr. Kennedy off the stage, with Mr. Biden’s campaign chair, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, writing explicitly in a letter to the commission, “President Biden made his terms clear for two one-on-one debates, and Donald Trump accepted those terms.”

But Mr. Kennedy could potentially qualify for the CNN debate, and the effort could actually be easier under the network’s polling rules than it would have been under the guidelines set by the debates commission. Mr. Kennedy needs to show at least 15 percent support in four approved national polls between March 13 and June 20. He already has at least two polls that show him above that threshold, one from CNN and one from Quinnipiac University . He has another five weeks to earn more qualifying polls.

To qualify for the CNN debate, Mr. Kennedy must also get on the ballot in enough states so that he could potentially win the 270 Electoral College votes needed to be elected president. He is currently on the ballot in five states , which in total have 84 electoral votes, but his campaign has another five weeks to place him on the ballot in other states before the deadline to qualify for the debate.

Mr. Kennedy criticized both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump after news of their planned debates became public on Wednesday.

“They are trying to exclude me from their debate because they are afraid I would win,” he wrote on social media . “Keeping viable candidates off the debate stage undermines democracy.”

Rebecca Davis O’Brien covers campaign finance and money in U.S. elections. She previously covered federal law enforcement, courts and criminal justice. More about Rebecca Davis O’Brien

Chris Cameron covers politics for The Times, focusing on breaking news and the 2024 campaign. More about Chris Cameron

Our Coverage of the 2024 Election

Presidential Race

President Biden and Donald Trump have agreed to two debates  on June 27 on CNN and Sept. 10 on ABC News, raising the likelihood of the earliest general-election debate  in modern history.

The early-debate gambit from Biden amounted to a public acknowledgment that he is trailing in his re-election bid , and a bet that an accelerated debate timeline will force voters to confront the possibility of Trump returning to power .

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate, the Silicon Valley investor Nicole Shanahan, said that she had given another $8 million  to their independent campaign.

Biden’s Investments in Battlegrounds:  Biden’s economic policies have helped spur billions of dollars in new investments in Arizona and Georgia, yet Trump has maintained a significant lead over Biden in both states .

Warming to Trump:  In an about-face, big financiers on Wall Street, in Silicon Valley and elsewhere are increasingly on board for a second Trump term  after the first one alienated them.

Russian Disinformation:  Ahead of the election, Russian disinformation videos are trying to appeal to right-wing voters with fake messages about Biden , experts say.

Black Women in the Senate:  The Democratic Party has taken heat for not backing Black female candidates in statewide races. But in November, voters could double the number of Black women ever elected to the Senate .