But if credit is to be given to one person, it’s often attributed to James Wilson of Pennsylvania, who proposed the idea prior to the committee of eleven making the recommendation. Towards Strategic Leadership - In a Time of Prolonged Crisis The Electoral College has 538 members and will vote on the current presidential candidates Dec. 14. The 23rd Amendment gave electors to the District of Columbia. Had no agreement been reached, the delegates would not have approved the Constitution. In the end, the electoral college was set up as a compromise between those who disagreed on whether the people or congress should elect the next president. Voters won't know who the electors are and it wouldn’t matter either way. It’s not clear which delegate came up with the idea, which was a partly national and partly federal solution, and which mirrored other structures in the Constitution. The reason why the Electoral College was created and if it’s the right system will always be subject to debate. But the Electoral College—a prototype of which Madison proposed in this same speech—instead let each southern state count its slaves, albeit with … In total, there are 538 electors, which include three electors from the District of Columbia. The Electoral College was never intended to be the “perfect” system for picking the president, says George Edwards III, emeritus political science professor at … Contrary to the popular belief that the Electoral College is a brilliant and well-established system, the reformers – those who wish to abolish the Electoral College in favor of a national popular vote – believe that the Electoral College The extent of the Country renders it impossible that the people can have the requisite capacity to judge of the respective pretensions of the Candidates.”, The delegates appointed a committee of 11 members – one from each state at the Constitutional Convention – to solve this and other knotty problems, which they called the “Grand Committee on Postponed Questions,” and charged with resolving “unfinished business, including how to elect the President.”. [Deep knowledge, daily. Any candidate who wins a majority or plurality of the popular vote nationwide has a good chance of winning in the Electoral College, but there are no guarantees (see the results of 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016 elections). How Many Electoral Votes Does a Candidate Need to Win? Ackerman Professor of Social Studies Education; Director, Ackerman Center; Associate Director, Purdue Center for Economic Education, Purdue University. Was the electoral college established? J.F. The Electoral College: A 2020 Presidential Election Timeline https://crsreports.congress.gov Archivist), while six duplicates of the Certificate of Ascertainment must be provided to the electors by December 14, the date The Electoral College was created for two reasons. How about the fact that in some instances electors aren’t required to vote for state winner and can defy the will of the people, a problem known colloquially as the “faithless elector.” It happened in 2000 when a Washington DC elector didn’t cast a vote in protest of the district's lack of congressional representation and also in 2004 when an elector from West Virginia pledged ahead of time to not vote for George W. Bush. The most notable, of course, is the possibility of a candidate losing the popular vote, but winning the election. When all is said and done, it's the Electoral College vote — not the popular vote — that decides the presidency. The Electoral College was created by the framers of the U.S. Constitution as a compromise for the presidential election process. But generally, each party puts up a list of electors that have pledged to support the party’s chosen nominees. Kurfürsten, Czech: Kurfiřt, Latin: Princeps Elector), or electors for short, were the members of the electoral college that elected the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. James Madison of Virginia was particularly concerned that holding a popular vote would disadvantage southern states, which were less populated than those in the north. When the Constitution was created, the purpose of the Electoral College was to ensure a democracy while also guaranteeing a qualified, well-rounded president. There are currently 538 electors, and an absolute majority of electoral votes, 270 or more, is required to win the election. What Happens if There Is a Tie in the Electoral College? This Chapter on Presidential Elections and Vacancies includes provisions on the The Electoral College is not a place, it’s the process that takes place to election the President of the United States. New Hampshire has four of those electors. The Electoral College has met every four years since the first meeting. The Electoral College is a process, not a place. What Happens If the Presidential Election Is a Tie, Presidents Elected Without Winning the Popular Vote, How Presidents and Vice Presidents Are Elected, Vice President of the United States: Duties and Details. November 4, 2020 12.02pm EST The delegates in Philadelphia agreed, in the summer of 1787, that the new country they were creating would not have a … 1. Three approaches were debated during the Constitutional Convention: election by Congress, selection by state legislatures and a popular election – though the right to vote was generally restricted to white, landowning men. In the case in which no candidates receive at least 270 electors, the decision goes to the U.S. House of representatives where a vote is held between the top three presidential candidates who received the most electors. Until proposed changes are accepted, it still remains the method by which the President of the US is chosen. The Electoral College has aided in presidential elections since 1804, when the American government was first being established. In the final tally, the candidates who receive the majority of the electors (270) will have been chosen as the next President and Vice President of the United States. In some instances, the electors are legally obliged to vote for their party’s candidate. And there was a serious move decades ago to abolish the Electoral College altogether. The Electoral College was written into the U.S. Constitution in 1787, a time when our nation was new and still struggling in many ways, including politically. Online, Victoria, Applying behavioural science to create change — For example, should the election end in a tie or if none of the candidates were able to garner a majority of electors, the vote gets tossed to congress, where each state gets one vote. Instead, the votes go toward choosing electors that are part of a group called the electoral college. But should the race remain deadlocked, the senate selects a vice president to take over as acting president until the deadlock is somehow resolved. The electors are picked by the citizens through a contest called the popular vote. The Journal of the Federal Convention records the formal proposal to create the Electoral College. But the founding fathers were fairly apprehensive about strictly letting the people make such an important decision regarding their government. So how exactly does the electoral college work? Doing so would most likely require amending the constitution to do away or to alter the twelfth amendment. While it's far-fetched, crazier things have happened before. Sure. info)), pl. Of course, there are other ways to get around the flaws, such as one proposal to have in which states can all collectively pass laws to hand all electors to the winner of the popular vote. For example, California has 53 representatives in the United States House of Representatives and two senators, so California has 55 electors. George Mason, a delegate from Virginia, shared Jefferson’s skepticism about regular Americans, saying it would be “unnatural to refer the choice of a proper character for chief Magistrate to the people, as it would, to refer a trial of colours to a blind man. Electors have even Hamilton also observed that legislators are often slower to move than top leaders might be expected to: “In the legislature, promptitude of decision is oftener an evil than a benefit.”. For one, they saw the potential for a tyranny of the majority, wherein 51 percent of the population elected an official that 49 percent wouldn’t accept. How many Electoral College votes are needed to win? Hamilton and the other founders were reassured that with this compromise system, neither public ignorance nor outside influence would affect the choice of a nation’s leader. The committee’s third report to the Convention proposed the adoption of a system of electors, through which both the people and the states would help choose the president. But others, including Alexander Hamilton, worried that states would select a weak executive, to increase their own power. One idea was to have the Congress choose the president. Make sure to update your bookmarks! At the beginning, six of the 11 members preferred national popular elections. But they’re not voting to elect candidates directly and not every vote counts in the final tally. As a system that undermines democracy, the Electoral College exists as evidence that the Founding Fathers did not trust the people to choose someone to represent them. This was eventually resolved – in one of those many compromises – by counting each enslaved person as three-fifths of a free person for the purposes of representation. The college is established in Article II, Section 1 of the US Constitution. Every four years, American citizens head to the polls to cast their vote for who they want to be President and Vice President of the United States. The Founding Fathers established it in the Constitution, in part, as a compromise between the election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens. The constitution was amended in 1925 and the electoral college was replaced with direct elections by popular vote since 1925. Some delegates thought getting states directly involved in picking the leader of the national government was a good approach for the new federal system. Originally, the Electoral College provided the Constitutional Convention with a compromise between the popular election of the President and congressional selection. In addition, the president might feel indebted to Congress and yield some power back to the legislative branch. The first meeting date was decided by the Continental Congress, because members of the first US Congress had not been selected. But perhaps the biggest problem is that while the electoral college is considered by many to be inherently unfair and can thus lead to a number of unsatisfying scenarios, it’s unlikely that politicians will be able to do away with the system anytime soon. The Electoral College website now has an easy-to-remember address. The first purpose was to create a buffer between the population and the selection of a President. The Electoral College is made up of 538 electors from the all of the states. The Electoral College is an important process that was implemented into the Constitution to provide a compromise between Congress and citizens when voting for our nation’s leader. Each state has its own ele Purdue University provides funding as a member of The Conversation US. However, fears were raised that Congress picking the winner would give that branch too much power. The Electoral College system was established in Article II of the Constitution and amended by the 12th Amendment in 1804. The House ultimately chose Jefferson as the third president, leaving Burr as vice president – not John Adams, who had led the opposing Federalist party ticket. The problem was resolved in 1804 when the 12th Amendment was ratified, allowing the electors to cast separate ballots for president and vice president. Each state establishes how their respective electors will be chosen. Want another one? 2. Melbourne, Victoria, Future public sector leaders' series The short answer is the founding fathers (aka the framers of the Constitution.) But the original system – in which the winner of the Electoral College would become president and the runner-up became vice president – fell apart almost immediately. Chile had an electoral college established by the 1828 Constitution, which was used to elect its president in the elections from 1829 to 1920. Some wanted a purely democratic popular vote and others wanted Congress to pick the victor. But if credit is to be given to one person, it’s often attributed to James Wilson of Pennsylvania, who proposed the idea prior to the committee of eleven making the recommendation. While the Electoral College was established in the Constitution, the details of the process are governed by Chapter 1 of Title 3, United States Code. Now, there seems to be little need for it. A transcript from the Constitutional Convention records the official report creating the Electoral College. But they did not agree on how to choose that president. This idea was rejected, however, because some felt that making such a choice would be too divisive an issue and leave too many hard feelings in the Congress. The founding fathers established it in the Constitution. The electoral college is the formal body which elects the US president and vice president. Even though the aggregate national popular vote is calculated by state officials, media organizations, and the Federal Election Commission, the people only indirectly elect the president. It’s the electors whose vote will determine the next president. Forty-eight of the states award the entire slate of electors to the winner of the popular vote while the other two, Maine and Nebraska, divvy up their electors more proportionally with the loser potentially still receiving electors.