ELECTORAL COLLEGE
Nominated persons, known as electors, from the states and the District of Columbia, who meet every four years in their home state or district and cast ballots to choose the president and vice president of the United States.
In the popular election, the American people
actually vote for electors, not for the candidates
themselves. The candidate who receives the
majority of votes from electors takes office.
Although the Constitution allows the electors to
vote for any candidate, they usually vote for the
candidate of the political party that nominated
them. In a limited number of instances, the
structure of the Electoral College has led to
unusual election results.
The republican basis of the Electoral College stems from the Constitution. When the
founders of the United States set out to secure a
system of political representation, many among
them feared mob rule. Elections based on repre-
sentative blocks of votes would implement
checks within the system. The Framers took into
consideration that large numbers of regional
candidates could appeal to the interests of vari-
ous select groups, and thus the populace could
be divided widely, and disturbances in the suc-
cession of power could ensue. They surmised
that Congress should have the power to settle
issues that are not resolved in a popular election,
and thus they created the Electoral College. As a
contributor to this system, ALEXANDER HAMIL-
TON said that it made sure “the office of Presi-
dent will seldom fall to the lot of any man who
is not in eminent degree endowed with the req-
uisite qualifications.” Rogue politicians, riding
any waves of popular sentiments, would need to
meet a higher approval before their election. The
Electoral College thus ensured an orderly trans-
fer of power, especially in the two-party system
that the United States developed.
Electors receive their appointments from a
wide and various informal circuit of possible
electoral candidates during election times and
are nominated in many states according to the
guidelines of individual state legislatures. The
procedures for nominating electors, whether at
party conventions, primary elections, or party
organizational meetings, differ throughout the
United States. The terms of electors are generally
not set by statute, and in some states parties
adopt their own criteria for selecting the col-
lege’s members. However, the Constitution pro-
vides that “no Senator or Representative, or
Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit
under the United States, shall be appointed an
Elector” (U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 2).
In most states, only the names of the presi-
dential and vice presidential candidates—not the
names of the electors—appear on election bal-
lots. The party that gains the most popular votes
in a state receives one electoral vote for each of its
electors. In each state, each party nominates the
same number of electors as there are representa-
tives and senators for that state in Congress.
On the first Monday after the second
Wednesday in December following the popular
election, the electors from each state’s victorious
party cast their ballots. The structure of the
Electoral College was established in Article II,
Section 1, of the U.S. Constitution. Under the
original provision, each elector of the college cast two votes for president, and the candidate
who received the second-highest number of
votes assumed the vice presidency. In 1804, the
TWELFTH AMENDMENT modified the original
plan to separate the votes cast for the president
and the vice president. The electors may choose
to vote for another candidate—as West Virginia’s electors did in the 1916 race between
CHARLES EVANS HUGHES and WOODROW WILSON. However, this occurs only rarely, and even less often does it sway the results of an election.
As the electoral system is designed, generally, all
of the electoral votes from each state go to the
winner of the state’s popular vote. Only Maine
does not use the winner-takes-all system; it uses
the district plan (discussed below).
The electors sign, seal, and certify lists of
their ballots. These lists go to Washington, D.C.,
where the president of the Senate, in the pres-
ence of the Senate and the House of Representa-
tives, opens them. The votes are counted. If the
electors fail to cast a majority vote, the House of
Representatives chooses the U.S. president and
vice president by ballot. In 1824, JOHN QUINCY
ADAMS was chosen as president by the House.
Although the recipient of the majority of the electoral votes is determined by the college, Congress retains the power of verifying the results and makes official the election of president and vice president.
Although the workings of the Electoral College have not gone unchallenged, significant
challenges are infrequent. However, the 2000
presidential election between GEORGE W. BUSH
and ALBERT GORE JR. inspired calls to reform or
eliminate the national Electoral College. The
election on November 7, 2000, was one of the
closest in U.S. history, and several media organ-
izations erroneously announced Gore as the
predicted winner before the election booths had
closed. Bush gained significant ground, and by
the end of the evening on November 7, it
appeared he had won the vote through the Elec-
toral College, even though Gore likely had won
the national popular vote.
The Electoral College consisted of 538 electors in 2000, one for each of the 435 members of
the House of Representatives and 100 Senators, and three for the District of Columbia.According to the U.S. Office of the Federal Register, for the 2000 election, 26 states and the District of
Columbia had laws in effect that bound their
electors to vote for the same candidate as the
majority of the general populace in that elector’s
state, and 24 did not. In most states, the presiden-
tial candidate who won the most popular votes
then received all electoral votes from that state,
referred to as the “winner-takes-all” feature. Only
two states, Maine and Nebraska, allocated their
electoral votes proportionally according to the
popular vote.
On December 18, 2000 (the second Wednes-
day in December), the electors met in their
respective states and went through the formality
of casting their votes for the candidates from the
party that elected them. Each state then reported
its totals to Congress, utilizing “Certificates of
Ascertainment,” which list names of the electors
and the number of votes received by each, and
“Certificates of Votes,” which list all persons
voted for as president and vice president and the
number of electors voting for each person.
The battle over the 2000 election focused on
Florida’s 25 electoral votes. Questions arose in
several Florida counties about the accuracy of
the election results from polls in those counties.
Soon after the election, officials from the Florida
counties began to call for a recount of the bal-
lots. After about a month of litigation and tense
national debate, the U.S. Supreme Court, in
BUSH V. GORE, 531 U.S. 98, 121 S. Ct. 525, 148 L.
Ed. 2d 388 (2000), ordered a halt to the manual
recounting. Florida is a “winner-takes-all” state,
and the election potentially hinged upon the
popular vote in a single county in that state. If a
recount were to show that Gore had received
more popular votes than Bush in Florida, Gore
would have received the 25 votes and would
have won the election.
In the months following the 2000 election,
many states reconsidered their methods for
appointing electors and also looked at institut-
ing changes directed toward more control over
electors’ votes. One of the areas for potential
reform has focused on the differences in the
requirements that electors cast their ballots for
the same candidate who garnered a majority of
the vote in the general populace in that state. A
second area is the “winner-takes-all” feature in
the majority of states. Although a few states have
introduced bills to modify their systems, calls for
reform have died down significantly. At the fed-
eral level, no electoral reform has progressed
through Congress since 1804, when adoption of
the Twelfth Amendment required electors to
specify separate candidates for president and
vice-president. Any reform would likely occur at
