Electoral College: Electing a President through the States

The election of the President of the United States is unique not only because is the most influential elected office in the world, but because it is the only elected office chosen not by public majority but through state representatives, known as the Electoral College. The Electoral College gets a bad rap these days but when properly understood, is a good system for the presidential election of a union.

The Electoral College system allocates Electors (voters) from each state which in turn vote for the president. The number of electors (538) is tied directly to the number of elected officials in the Senate (100) and House of Representatives (435) plus 3 added for the District of Columbia.

Each state in the union has 2 senators and their representatives in the house are based on population. Thus the election of the president is a mixture of both. The state of Michigan, for example, has 2 senators and 15 members of the house and therefore has 17 electoral votes.

In the Electoral College, each state holds elections for their candidate. The winner of the state election then receives the votes of its electors.

The Electoral College is consistent with the US principal that it supports the sovereignty of the individual states. While most think of the US as a country much like France, Germany or Japan, it is actually a union of separate economies (states), more like the European Union…except we get along. The Federal Government’s role is to support the local economies in light of the larger association. This is why Governors, rather than congressmen, are more preferred for the office of the presidency (Regan, Bush, Clinton); it is the next logical step. In the presidential elections, states determine their own candidates through a popular vote.

While most states allocate all of their electoral votes to the majority candidate, states can choose how they appropriate electors. Of the 50 states, 48 allocate all of their electoral votes to the state winner. The two defectors, Maine and Nebraska, share similar methods which is a combination of state-wide (2 electors) and district (1 for each) popular votes. Colorado recently tried to pass a referendum allocating electoral votes to the percentage of the state-wide popular vote, which highly I support.

What is interesting this year’s election is that some of the key fighting states getting a lot of attention aren’t huge markets like California, Texas or New York, but smaller populations like Nevada Colorado, New Mexico and Virginia. What the Electoral College brings is the opportunity for those in important but less popular areas to play important roles in the electoral process. In a popular vote, more focus, time and energy would go to populous areas such as Chicago, New York, Miami, and therefore a bulk of the election would be determined on the big-city mind-sets ignoring more traditional conservative values in smaller towns and rural areas.

Changing the electoral system would mean changing the constitution of the US, a slippery slope that very few would be willing to approach. Even more, it would diminish the role of the state in US affairs, a consequence that affects its competitiveness and marketability in the US economy. The Electoral College is an issue that Europe should take that to heart as it continues to build and establish its own union.