Many people think we will go to the polls next November to choose our next president, and that everyone’s vote will count equally. But that is not how it is done. The president is chosen by the electoral college, and many people do not understand how it works or why.
When our founding fathers wrote the Constitution, they were trying to create a government that would preserve the right of people to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Their intent was to diffuse government power so it could not be concentrated in the hands of one person, or a small group of people. Thus, they created four separate branches of government: the senate, with two representatives chosen by the legislature of each state; the house of representatives, whose members were directly elected by the people with their number based on the population of each state; and a judiciary with a Supreme Court appointed to lifetime terms by the house and senate.
When it came to choosing the president, there was considerable discussion because this was the head of the executive branch, who was supposed to bring everything together and make government work.
In the parliamentary democracies in Europe, this is the job of the prime minister, who is chosen by a majority vote of the members of the parliament. But there is a difference between a parliament and our congress. In the US, congressmen are elected to represent specific districts, whereas in most parliamentary governments, representation is based largely on the percent of the vote a political party receives in the general election. For example, if a party received 5 percent of the general vote, it is given 5 percent of the seats in parliament. This means that when it comes to forming a ruling coalition in parliament, a small party can sometime wield considerable power.
The framers of our Constitution decided to create the Electoral College to choose the president rather than leaving the decision up to Congress, but the Constitution doesn’t tell the states how to choose their electors. Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution simply states that “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: but no senator or representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector.”
Initially, most states had their legislatures choose the electors, and only a few did it by popular vote, but this gradually changed over time, and by 1824 all the states chose their electors by popular vote. The state legislatures had also been tasked with appointing two senators to represent them in congress and this, too, changed over time. In 1913 the 17th Amendment to the constitution was passed requiring all states to elect their senators by popular vote. However, no amendment was ever passed mandating direct election of the electoral college, so it is only by tradition that we get to vote for the president.
People tend to think that all votes should count the same, but the electoral college gives more power to the smaller states, because each state gets three electors regardless of its population. For example, states with smaller populations like Alaska, Delaware, Vermont, Hawaii, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota and Montana each have three electoral votes which is one elector for every 125,000 voters; while more heavily populated states like California, New York, Texas and Florida have one electoral vote for every 250,000 voters. Thus, voters in less populated states have twice as much representation in the electoral college than the voters in more heavily populated states.
Another way the Electoral College distorts the vote is that most states allocate their votes on a winner-takes-all basis, which means if one wins the popular election by a single vote, they get all the electors. For example, Hillary Clinton carried California by a margin of 4,269,978 voters in 2016, which means she threw away 4,269,977 votes because all she needed was a margin of 1 vote.
Many Democrats would love to dump the Electoral College and go strictly by the popular vote, because twice in recent history they have won the popular vote and lost in the electoral college (Bush v. Gore in 2000 and Trump v. Clinton in 2016). If they are serious about it, they should pass a constitutional amendment to change it. Meanwhile, the Electoral College is the law of the land, and I have a hunch it may play a major role in the 2024 “election from hell.”
As I mentioned earlier, most parliamentary democracies have multiple political parties, and they form their ruling coalition as they are choosing their prime minister. In the U.S., we first appoint a president, then the president assembles their cabinet. This results in our rather unique “two-party” system, because minor parties are useless. They may come and go, but unless they can win a majority on their own, they have no value other than entertainment or perhaps to vent frustration for voters fed up with the two major parties.
Our political parties build their potential ruling-coalitions at their party conventions. This is where they decide which issues they are going to push to appeal to this voting bloc or that voting bloc so they can get 51 percent in the Electoral College. They are very tight-lipped about who they might appoint to their cabinet for fear of alienating a potential supporter.
Currently, there is a huge gap in the middle of the political spectrum filled with people who are not buying what either major party is selling. Thus, there is a chance we could have a third viable candidate running for president. To give you an idea of how crazy things can get with more than two major candidates in the presidential race, History.com has the following account of the 1824 election when there were four viable candidates: Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, William Crawford and Henry Clay:
“When the votes were tallied, Andrew Jackson won a plurality of both the popular vote and the Electoral College. But to win the presidency, you need more than a plurality (the most electoral votes), you need a majority (more than half), and Jackson was 32 electoral votes shy of the mark.
“In cases where no presidential candidate wins a majority of electoral votes, the Constitution sends the vote to the House of Representatives. According to the 12th Amendment, the House can only vote on the top three vote-getters, which eliminated Clay from the running, but that didn’t stop Clay from allegedly wielding his influence as Speaker of the House.
“The House voted to make Adams president, even though Jackson had beaten Adams by 99 electoral votes to 84. Adams turned around and appointed Clay as his secretary of state, infuriating Jackson, who accused his opponents of stealing the election in a corrupt bargain.”
“[T]he Judas of the West has closed the contract and will receive the 30 pieces of silver,” said Jackson. “Was there ever witnessed such a bare faced corruption in any country before?”
Cheer up, our nation survived.
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