After the 2000 U.S. presidential election, just about everybody
in the United States was talking about the Electoral College. In
the end, of course, Gore won the popular vote (more Americans
voted for him), but Bush actually won the presidency, because he
was awarded the majority of the votes in the Electoral College.
In this article, we'll explain how this interesting system
works. How is it that a candidate could win more votes overall
and yet not be elected? What would happen if there were a tie in
the Electoral College? Who then would elect the president? You
will find out about the past elections that weren't decided on
Election Day but weeks later, when the Electoral College met,
and some that weren't decided until months later. You'll also
learn about the strange election of the first son of a former
president to win the presidency.
The Founding Fathers' Idea
Every four years, on the Tuesday following the first
Monday of November, millions of U.S. citizens go to local voting
booths to elect, among other officials, the next president and
vice president of their country. Their votes will be recorded
and counted, and winners will be declared. But the results of
the popular vote are not guaranteed to stand because the
Electoral College has not cast its vote.
The Electoral College is a controversial mechanism of
presidential elections that was created by the framers of the
U.S. Constitution as a compromise for the presidential election
process. At the time, some politicians believed a purely popular
election was too reckless, while others objected to giving
Congress the power to select the president. The compromise was
to set up an Electoral College system that allowed voters to
vote for electors, who would then cast their votes for
candidates, a system described in Article II, section 1 of the
Constitution.
Each state has a number of electors equal to the number of its
U.S. senators (2 in each state) plus the number of its U.S.
representatives, which varies according to the state's
population. Currently, the Electoral College includes 538
electors, 535 for the total number of congressional members, and
three who represent Washington, D.C., as allowed by the 23rd
Amendment. On the Monday following the second Wednesday in
December, the electors of each state meet in their respective
state capitals to officially cast their votes for president and
vice president. These votes are then sealed and sent to the
president of the Senate, who on Jan. 6 opens and reads the votes
in the presence of both houses of Congress. The winner is sworn
into office at noon Jan. 20. Most of the time, electors cast
their votes for the candidate who has received the most votes in
that particular state. However, there have been times when
electors have voted contrary to the people's decision, which is
entirely legal.
When the Electoral College Counted
In most presidential elections, a candidate who wins
the popular vote will also receive the majority of the electoral
votes, but this is not always the case. There have been four
presidents who have won an election with fewer popular votes
than their opponent but more electoral votes.
Here are the four
elections when the candidate who led the popular vote did not
win the office:
1824: John Quincy
Adams, the son of former President John Adams, received more
than 38,000 fewer votes than Andrew Jackson, but neither
candidate won a majority of the Electoral College. Adams was
awarded the presidency when the election was thrown to the
House of Representatives.
1876: Nearly unanimous
support from small states gave Rutherford B. Hayes a
one-vote margin in the Electoral College, despite the fact
that he lost the popular vote to Samuel J. Tilden by 264,000
votes. Hayes carried five out of the six smallest states
(excluding Delaware). These five states plus Colorado gave
Hayes 22 electoral votes with only 109,000 popular votes. At
the time, Colorado had been just been admitted to the Union
and decided to appoint electors instead of holding
elections. So, Hayes won Colorado's three electoral votes
with zero popular votes. It was the only time in U.S.
history that small state support has decided an election.
1888: Benjamin
Harrison lost the popular vote by 95,713 votes to Grover
Cleveland, but won the electoral vote by 65. In this
instance, some say the Electoral College worked the way it
is designed to work by preventing a candidate from winning
an election based on support from one region of the country.
The South overwhelmingly supported Cleveland, and he won by
more than 425,000 votes in six southern states. However, in
the rest of the country he lost by more than 300,000 votes.
2000: Al Gore
received 50,992,335 votes nationwide and George W. Bush
received 50,455,156 votes. After Bush was awarded the state
of Florida, he had a total of 271 electoral votes, which
beat Gore's 266 electoral votes.
Today, a candidate must receive 270 of the 538 votes to win the
election. In cases where no candidate wins a majority of
electoral votes, the decision is thrown to the House of
Representatives by virtue of the 12th Amendment. The House then
selects the president by majority vote with each state
delegation receiving one vote to cast for the three candidates
who received the most electoral votes.
Here are the two elections
that were decided by the House of Representatives:
1801: Thomas Jefferson
and Aaron Burr, both Democrat-Republicans, received the same
number of electoral votes, despite the fact that Burr was
running as a vice presidential candidate, not for the
presidency. Following 36 successive votes in the House,
Jefferson was finally elected president.
1825: As mentioned
above, Andrew Jackson received a majority of the popular
vote over John Quincy Adams, but neither man received a
131-vote majority of electoral votes needed at the time to
claim the presidency. Adams won the House vote on the first
ballot.
The Present View
Proponents of the Electoral College say that the system
served its purpose in the elections we talked about, despite the
fact that the candidate who won the popular vote didn't always
win the election. The Electoral College is a block, or weighed,
voting system that is designed to give more power to the states
with more votes, but allows for small states to swing an
election, as happened in 1876. Under this system, each state is
assigned a specific number of votes that is proportional to its
population, so that each state's power is representative of its
population. So, while winning the popular vote may not ensure a
candidate's victory, a candidate must gain popular support of a
particular state to win the votes in that state. The goal of any
candidate is to put together the right combination of states
that will give him or her 270 electoral votes.
In 2000, as the election approached, some observers thought that
Bush, interestingly also the son of a former president, could
win the popular vote, but that his opponent, Gore, could win the
Electoral College vote because Gore was leading in certain big
states, such as California, New York and Pennsylvania.
When the Electoral College Counted