On the Tuesday following the first Monday of November every four years, Americans go to the polls to vote for the President and Vice-President of the United States.
Except they don't.
Even though they tick a box beside the name of the President and the Vice President, they are not actually directly voting for these offices.
They are, in fact, telling Electors how to vote in the Electoral College.
The Electoral College is made up of 538 Electors: one for each seat in the Senate (100); one for each seat in the House of Representatives (435); and 3 for the District of Columbia. These 538 people vote for the President and the Vice-President of the United States.
The Electoral College system was designed in a time before political parties were the key to elections. The system was meant to prevent citizens from simply voting for their own state representative. It could be argued that the system was put in place because elites distrusted citizens to make a choice in the national interest.
Similarly, in Canada, we do not elect the Prime Minister. The Governor General asks the leader of a political party to form a government. Traditionally, this is the leader of the party with the most seats in the House of Commons. Although this practice has become the norm it is not necessarily required that the Governor General follows this rule. Canadians directly elect their representative for the House of Commons but do not elect the leader of the country.
In the Electoral College larger states have more electors. This distribution occurs because the number of Electors is based, in part, on the number of seats each state has in the House of Representatives. These seats are determined by population. No state can receive less than one seat in the House so, after the first fifty are distributed (one per state), the remaining seats are allocated. The average population of a congressional district (which you might think of as a riding or constituency) is about 700,000 people. So, Florida has 27 electors, Texas has 34 and California has 55 whereas Delaware, Montana and South Dakota have 3 each. So, using this model of electoral vote distribution, Delaware has three Electoral College votes because they have one seat in a congressional district and two state senate seats. This weighting of electoral votes explains why you will hear the newscaster refer to certain states as critical to a nominee's chances for election.
Electors are chosen in each state by political parties. They make a pledge to vote for the party's winning candidate. Historically they vote in line with the state's popular vote but they are not required to do so. They may in fact vote for the person who did not win. This happens very rarely and, in my research, I found that in some states electors could be charged for "faithlessness" (i.e. breaking the pledge).
All but two states use a "winner-takes-all" approach to awarding Electoral College votes. If, for example, a candidate wins the popular vote in California, they win all 55 Electoral College votes. Only Maine and Nebraska use a different system. They use the "Congressional District Method." For example, Maine has 4 electoral votes. They give 2 votes to the winner of popular vote for the whole state. Maine has 2 congressional districts. These votes are awarded to the winner in each district. So let's say that if in Congressional District number 1 the Republicans win the most votes in that district then the Republicans win that electoral vote. If the Democrats win in Congressional District 2, they win the other electoral vote. Thus, in Maine it is possible to have 3 electoral votes go to the Republicans and 1 electoral vote goes the Democrats.
While this all might seem somewhat confusing, the point, as my colleague points out, is that the system is designed to support federalism; in the end, 50 states choose the executive.
This week's column, and other columns I have written, could not have happened without the generous and thoughtful comments of a number of my colleagues at UNBC. Any errors are, of course, my own.
