As our nation gets closer to Election Day, there will be more attention focused on the Electoral College, a unique American institution. So what is it and how does it work?
The Electoral College isn’t a physical college with a campus and football team. The word “college” at the time of Constitutional Convention was used to describe a group of people. Today, there will be 538 people in the group that casts votes, based on popular election results, for President and Vice President.
Here are the basics about that group, their important role, and how they interact with Congress.
1. How did we get an Electoral College?
At the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia there were at least four methods proposed to elect the President and Vice President: election by Congress, election by state governors, election by state legislatures and direct election by voters. No one could agree on the best method, so the Committee of Eleven on Postponed Matters came up with the Electoral College as a compromise.
The Electoral College made some states happy by letting the states pick the voting methods for “electors” who would meet as a group (or college) and cast their votes for President and Vice President several weeks after the general election. Each state got two electors for having Senators and the rest were equal to its membership in the House of Representatives. This gave some greater weight to smaller states and it also kept members of Congress from picking a President unless there wasn’t a clear winner.
The Committee of Eleven on Postponed Matters included James Madison, John Dickinson, Roger Sherman and Gouverneur Morris, but it was James Wilson who had promoted the idea before the committee met in secret.
The Electoral College compromise passed after another compromise from Sherman led to each state having one vote in a House run-off election if the Electoral College didn’t have a majority winner.
2. What are the Electoral College rules?
The Constitution’s Article II, Section 1 explains the basic Electoral College rules. A majority of electors are needed to elect a President; members of Congress or people holding a United States office can’t be electors; electors can’t pick two candidates from their own state, and Congress determines when the electors meet within their states.
The state Electoral Colleges’ sealed votes are sent to the Vice President, acting as President of the Senate, where the envelopes are opened in front of the members of Congress and counted. If there is a dispute over the final vote count, the Senate and House meet separately to decide the dispute. Both a majority of the House and Senate need to agree to disqualify votes as submitted.
If there wasn’t a majority winner, the House selects a President and the Senate would choose a Vice President.
3. When do the electors in each state meet?
Political parties within states pick people to serve as electors, under rules approved by state legislatures. The 23rd Amendment changed the system by adding three electors for the District of Columbia, which isn’t a state and doesn’t have elected members of Congress. On Election Day, people vote for a presidential and vice presidential candidate and a slate of electors that represents those candidates. (The names of the electors don’t appear on the ballot.)
The electors of each state convene, under current federal law, on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. (Any disputes within the states over electors must be resolved by December 13.)
They almost always meet in person at the state capital. This year, they meet on December 19. In 48 of 50 states, just the electors who represent the candidate with the most popular votes on Election Day each get to cast votes in the Electoral College election. (Maine and Nebraska split votes by congressional district.)
Each state group sends its endorsed, official vote count certificate to the Vice President (acting as President of the Senate), state officials, the federal court that had jurisdiction over the state capital area, and the federal Archivist. The vote certificates must be received in Washington by December 28.
4. When is the Electoral College “election”?
The new federal Congress, usually on January 6, convenes for the official Electoral College vote count. The Vice President opens the vote certificates and passes them to four members of Congress, who count the votes.
If there is a majority winner with at least 270 electoral votes and there are no objections filed by members of Congress, the Presidential election is certified and over. If there isn’t a majority winner, the election is sent to Congress to decide.
Once the election goes to Congress, the House picks the President and the Senate picks a Vice President. Each state delegation gets one vote in the House runoff or contingent election, and the top three presidential vote getters in the Electoral College are on the ballot. A candidate needs a majority of the votes to win. In the Senate, each member gets a vote, with the top two vice-presidential candidates on the ballot. A majority is required to win
5. What happens if an elector votes for another candidate?
Sometimes an elector won’t vote for the candidate he or she was pledged to represent. States have the power to punish faithless electors with fines and possible jail time, but once certified votes are sent to Washington, it’s up to Congress to accept that vote.
There have been more than 150 faithless electors in Electoral College history for various reasons. In some cases, Vice Presidential candidates died between Election Day and the Electoral College voting date. In other cases, electors switched votes for various reasons.
In one case, back in 1968, Congress used its powers under federal law to decide the fate of a faithless electoral voter who voted for George Wallace instead of Richard Nixon. After objections were filed in the House and Senate, both bodies voted separately to accept the vote. In 2004, the House and Senate agreed to consider a dispute over Ohio’s certificate, and both groups approved the submitted certificate in separate votes.
Scott Bomboy is the editor in chief of the National Constitution Center.
