A Brief History
On December 19, 2016, another part of our democratic process will take place when the 538 electors of the Electoral College vote in the official US Presidential election of 2016. All those millions of individual votes could either be confirmed or thrown out with the trash, depending on how the electors vote.
Digging Deeper
With a mandatory majority of 270 votes needed to be elected President, if no candidate gets that many electors to vote for him/her the vote would be remanded to the House of Representatives, who would then choose our next president.
Who are these electors and why do we have this system? Well, each state has a general election to select electors from citizens that are not federal political office holders, and these electors are sworn to vote the way the majority of voters in that state voted. Only thing is, despite this oath and in some cases criminal penalties for not following the will of the state’s voters, the electors can vote for anyone they want after all. Sure, they may be fined or given a token sentence, but in reality no one can stop them from doing just that. In past elections there have been very few electors that did not vote the way their state voted.
This year, things are different! With Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote by over 2 and a half million votes, and with the Russian interference with our election coming to light, some electors may feel obligated to vote for someone other than the person elected by their state. In some cases, electors are so opposed to Donald Trump personally that the elector may vote for someone else. If the result of the elector defections is that Trump fails to get the needed 270 electoral votes, the House of Representatives can elect a totally different person.
Why do we subject ourselves to this scenario? Because back in the formative years of the USA, when the 12th Amendment to the Constitution was drafted instituting the Electoral College, we had slave states and free states. The slave states wanted their slave population to count in their political power, because if there was a simple direct election only free white men would vote and Northern (free) states would have more influence than the Southern (slave) states. Thus, our founding fathers came up with a plan where 3/5 of the slave population would count as the states’ population, which gave the slave states more congress representatives and more electors than were reflected by their voting population. Make no mistake, the Electoral College exists mainly because of accommodating slave states.
Another reason, more politically correct to refer to for having an Electoral College, is to have level headed people of repute to cast the official votes, presumably preventing some sort of Hitler-esque demagogue from getting elected President (a scenario some liken the Trump campaign to!). James Madison and Alexander Hamilton wrote about their reasons for implementing an Electoral College in the so called “Federalist Papers.” These writings, especially by Hamilton, are being cited today by supporters of this system.
The 2016 election will be the 5th time the nation’s popular vote for president did not match the electoral vote, unless of course a bizarre and unexpected number of electors defect! Question for students (and subscribers): Do you think we should have a direct election from the people, or do you think we should keep this Electoral College? Please give us your opinion in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Jaime, Mrs. Catherine McGrew. Understanding Presidential Elections: The Constitution, Caucuses, Primaries, Electoral College, and More. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012.
Ross, Tara and George Will. Enlightened Democracy: The Case for the Electoral College. Colonial Press L.P., 2012.