A Historical Look at the Electoral College

Editor’s Note: This is part one of a two part series.

The Electoral College was never intended to be a perfect system. The system resulted from a messy compromise between the Founding Fathers — an attempt to create a system that wouldn’t result in outrage. The Electoral College was set up after years and years of dispute, and given the recent cries on social media to dismantle the system, it’s clear that this is not the most effective way to elect a president.

The goals of the Electoral College can be best understood by examining its origins. The idea of a direct popular vote was quickly ruled out, because the general population was believed to be not educated enough to make a vote. Another group of delegates feared that the system may quickly go corrupt if Congress was to decide the election. And so the first compromise was made — states would vote for their own “electors” who would then cast votes for the presidency on behalf of their respective state.

As opposed to what some may think, the electoral college is not just a group of people, but a process which includes choosing electors, meeting in Congress to vote for the President and Vice President, and counting electoral votes. The number of a state’s electors includes the number of representatives the state has in Congress as well as two senators. Since the total number of electors in the nation is 538, a presidential candidate must win a majority with 270 votes or more to win the Electoral College. 

When people vote for a presidential candidate, they aren’t voting for the actual candidate–they’re voting for a list of electors that will cast their vote for whichever candidate wins the popular vote in that state. In the months before the election, every political party in a state decides on the electors that will represent that state. For example, since Joe Biden won the popular vote in the state of Pennsylvania, all twenty of its electoral votes are given to the Democratic electors. 

All fifty states, except for two, have a winner-take-all system. Whoever wins the state’s popular vote wins all of the state’s electoral votes– no matter how large or small of a percentage they win by. Maine and Nebraska, however, split their electoral votes between congressional districts, and leave two extra votes for the winner of the state popular vote. After the result of the November election, the electors finally begin their job. 

On the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December (yes, it’s actually this specific), electors only from the winning political party in their state meet in their state capitals to cast their votes for the presidential candidate. On January 6th of the following year, the electoral votes are counted in a session of Congress. If a presidential candidate receives 270 or more votes, they are announced as the president-elect. If no presidential candidate reaches the 270 mark, the House of Representatives decides the president-elect based on a majority vote. The Electoral College is very, very specific, and has been developed over the course of many years to get to where it is today. But should it remain? 

One of the arguments constantly given by those who wish to continue using this system is that the Electoral College is necessary to maintain the American ideal of Federalism. Federalism is at the base of all governments in America; it’s a system where underneath the country’s federal government lies a second system of  state government with officials elected from each state who then vote on behalf of the state. If the US were to dismantle this system, it wouldn’t fit in with the rest of our government. In a country where we elect senators to handle important political scenarios, it only makes sense to allow for a middle ground between the people and the president.

With any type of electoral system, people fear that a president may win the race because they specifically targeted, and therefore gained, all of the votes from one specific region. One huge benefit of the Electoral College is that the distribution of electoral votes does not allow for situations like this to occur. In numerous presidential elections, much of the midwest has voted Republican and the race was still extremely close or won by the Democrat candidate — this situation played out in the 2020 election. 

However, the electoral college becomes a heated topic of discussion every time the presidential election comes around. And there’s a reason (or several) for the everlasting debate about keeping or tossing the electoral college. 

The electoral college was a compromise made between the Founding Fathers to satisfy groups that wanted everyday citizens to pick the president, and people who wanted Congress to pick the president. White Southern plantation owners were a part of the group that wanted Congress to pick the president because they had more representatives in Congress. However, Southern states had fewer representatives in Congress despite overall population size due to enslaved people not being counted for representation.  

The plan that the Founding Fathers came up with was called the “Three-Fifths Compromise,” which states that slaves counted as three-fifths of a person when it came to deciding how many representatives a state had. Since Southern states had considerably more slaves than Northern states, they received more representatives through this compromise, increasing their power in Congress. 

As modern society continues to develop, the electoral college is not relevant anymore. What started out as a way for Southern plantation owners to gain power in Congress has become the ultimate deciding factor for presidential elections today. We must recognize that inequalities of the past should not remain in the foundations of America today. The Electoral College no longer serves the same purpose.

Furthermore, the electoral college completely ignores the will of the majority of Americans. There’s a reason that presidential candidates focus all their time and money on certain “swing states,” such as Florida and Pennsylvania. The outcome of presidential elections is almost always decided by the voters in these states. Voters in swing states have more power over the result of the election than voters in states where a political party wins by a large margin.

And even with all this, the results of the election that come out in November may not be the actual results. When electors go to Congress and vote, there is no assurance that they will actually vote for the candidate that their political party represents. Only 33 states require electors to vote for their pledged candidate, while 17 of those states actually have a penalty–the rest of the states don’t have any mechanisms to prevent the differing vote from counting. The electors that don’t vote for their party’s candidate are called “faithless” electors, and there have been more than 150 of them ever since the creation of the electoral college in 1789. Even though none of the faithless electors have changed the result of the election, there is no assurance in the fact that the result of an election may be determined by a skewed vote.