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Thursday, October 22, 2020 | 9
How the electoral college affects the election There is a lot of Ugonna Ezuma-Igwe confusion in terms Managing Editor of what the electoral
college is and how it affects the general election process. There are arguments that the electoral college is outdated and no longer needed but there are also people who argue that the electoral college is needed. Regardless of these arguments voters still need to know what the electoral college is. The Electoral College is an entity made up of 538 electors and forms every four years solely to elect the president and vice president of the United. 538 electors are made up of different amounts of electors representing each state and Washington D.C. For each state’s electors, they are chosen based on the number of senators plus the number of its U.S. Representatives (which may change each decade according to the size of each State’s population as determined in the Census.) In order to win the election, there must be an absolute majority-- 270 electors or more is required to win the election. There are varying ways in which an elector is chosen. 33 states choose electors by party convention, while seven states and Washington DC selects electors by state party committees. The rest of the states use gubernatorial( the state governor or someone front the governor’s office) appointments, appointments by party nominees, state chair appointments, presidential nominee appointments, and hybrid methods for elector selection. Smaller states, with fewer people, like Vermont and South Dakota, are overrepresented since there is a minimum requirement of three electoral votes per state. While bigger states, with more people, like California and Texas, are underrepresented in the electoral college. There are rules in place when selecting electors to maintain the balance between the legislative and executive branches of the federal government. One rule is that members of Congress and employees of the federal government are prohibited from serving as an Elector. Also in North Carolina, any elector who signified his consent to serve as an elector and then fails to attend and vote, unless they are sick or in other unavoidable accidents, must pay the state $500. Typically most states give all their electoral college votes to whoever won the poll of ordinary voters in the state. An example
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A depiction of each states number of electors would be, if the Democratic candidate won 50.1% of the vote in North Carolina, they would be awarded all 15 of North Carolina’s electoral college votes. Only Maine and Nebraska divide up their electoral college votes according to the proportion of votes each candidate receives. For this reason, presidential candidates target specific “swing states” during their campaigns rather than trying to win voters across the country. There tend to be more campaign stops, rallies and events in swing states. A swing state is a US state where the two major political parties have similar levels of support among voters meaning the vote could go any way. In 2016, presidential candidates spent 71% of their advertising money and 57% of their campaign appearances in Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio (swing states). The electoral college is the reason why a presidential candidate can win the popular vote and not become president. The winner of the presidential elections of 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016 did not win the popular vote but won through the electoral college. With the latest being Donald Trump who had almost 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. The Electoral College was created in 1787 as a compromise between the election of the President by a vote in Congress and the election of the President by a popular vote
of qualified citizens. American founders created the electoral college for multiple reasons: • To balance the interests of highpopulation and low-population states • To put a buffer between the people and electing the president; a chosen group of people would be able to object to the people’s vote • They believed that not all voters were informed enough to choose a leader • The creation of the Electoral College was part of a political agenda for slavery to persist in the United States, None of the Founding Fathers’ assumptions about the electoral system proved true. It was never written how the electoral college electors should be picked in the constitution. The Founding Fathers assumed that each elector’s vote would be counted but all but two states no longer follow this. According to History.com, Founders also assumed that most elections would ultimately be decided by neither the people nor the electors, but by the House of Representatives. The Founders also assumed that subsequent races would include a huge amount of candidates who would split the electoral college votes into little pieces, in the end allowing Congress to pick the winner. As soon as national political parties were created, the number of presidential
candidates began to decrease. Only two U.S. elections have been decided by the House and the last one was in 1824. For these reasons, many people believe the electoral college should be dismantled. People believe that it allows candidates to focus too much on swing states-- they spend most of their time and resources in these states because they have a lot of power in deciding the next presidential election. People also believe that the Electoral College gives disproportionate influence to whiter, more rural states so it is believed that the GOP benefits the most. People believe smaller states get too much power as they must have at least 3 electoral votes. People’s biggest issue is that they feel that their vote doesn’t count, almost as if they are wasting their time to go out and vote. On the other hand, some people think the electoral college needs to stay and that it is integral to America’s federalist philosophy. Allen Guelzo argued in National Affairs that by eliminating the Electoral College, other institutions would reform. He suggests that its elimination will “open federalism to review” resulting in the need for the U.S Senate. Nonetheless, the electoral college is an integral part of the election process.
