The Electoral college is spelled out in article 2 of the constitution. In article 2 it states, “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress.” The founders decided to put the electoral college as our election mechanism because the founders understood a tendency towards urbanization and concentrated populations. During this time the founders did not want urban areas or larger states to dominate the political process of voting. The electoral process gave a much broader election mechanism that would reflect the country as a whole; rather than an individualized thought process.
The electoral college is also considered as a compromise between larger and smaller states. Effortlessly, to say in Congress we have the house of representatives, which is determined by a state’s population no matter the size of the state. The electoral college is extremely population-based which means big states have more influence over the smaller states. For reference, California has 55 electoral votes but in contrast a state like Wyoming it only has 3 votes. The electoral college also provides that a candidate must win many areas of the country, not just population centers. In any election a candidate has to win not only some parts of the West Coast, North, South or Midwest it has to have a well-rounded success rate of all of those areas, a candidate cannot just win one area of the country. The electoral college is an indirect democracy which means that we do not choose our president directly. The electoral system is an example of federalism because both the feds and the states are involved in the process. One of the reasons why we want to make sure that the states are involved in the process is because we want them to be a part of the federalistic family. The Virginia plan gave the ideas of how we put the constitution together at the Constitutional Convention, the argument was it should be Congress decision to pick the president. However, many anti-federalists felt that this would be too cozy of a relationship if the legislative branch chose the executive branch.
The electoral college is a collection of the 538 votes that determine who the president of United States will be. The 538 votes represent 100 senators plus the number of representatives which is 438 in Congress. These 538 votes in the electoral college are not given to the citizens directly but are instead dived along the state. In each state, no matter how populous or not get three votes to start, the remaining votes are given out roughly in proportion to the population of the state. The more people a state has, the more votes it gets. In early November, when citizens go to the polls to vote, they are not voting for the president directly, they are really telling their states how they want it to use its electoral vote. Forty-eight out of the 50 states give all their electoral college votes to the candidate who wins a majority in their state. Take Florida, for example, which has 29 electoral votes. If a candidate has a majority, no matter how small that majority is they will get all the votes. To win a Presidency a candidate has to win 270 out of 538 electoral college votes to become president. So, therefore, the path to the white house is clear, win enough majorities in enough states to get more than half of the electoral votes and you will get to sit in the oval office.
In an honorable democracy people’s vote should count equitably, but the system of the electoral college does not make this possible. When the founders constructed the electoral college; it made some people vote more substantial than others. The reason why the electoral college was introduced in the 1700s was that people did not have the ability to know about the president that they had to vote for. This was an era in which most Americans did not travel more than five miles from their birthplace. The most efficient form of communication was a kid traveling on a horseback carrying a rolled-up piece of newspaper. The people during this time just did not have access to information to make an informed decision about the president.
In Addition, the electoral college was created solely for the people, to pick trusted elected officials to vote for their presidential candidate on their behalf. During this time the electoral college was a masterful solution but today people are much more informed and aware of what’s going on in society. Perhaps, the best example of an electoral malfunction is the popular vote vs. electoral vote. The popular vote derives from the average citizens that vote for a presidential candidate.
In some cases, the presidential candidate can win more popular votes and lose by electoral votes. In the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton lost because of the malfunction of electoral votes but she won overall in popular votes. According to CNN, “The Democrat outpaced President-elect Donald Trump by almost 2.9 million votes, with 65,844,954 (48.2%) to his 62,979,879 (46.1%), according to revised and certified final election results from all 50 states and the District of Columbia.” Hillary broke a new record in history for having the most overall popular votes but losing in electoral votes; no losing candidate has ever received these many votes. Hillary also received more votes than Obama in his 2012 election. There is something eerily undemocratic about a candidate receiving two million less than his opponent and yet still emerging victorious. The fact that a nation of people came together and helped her to win in popular votes shows who the citizens wanted in office. The system format of electoral voting in this situation portrayed this election to look rigid for a person who does not know about electoral votes.