The Electoral College is what really determines who wins an election and who doesn’t. Few people, myself included, really understand how this works because the process is so convoluted. It goes something like this: The Electoral College was established by the founding fathers as a compromise between election of the president by Congress and election by popular vote. The electors are a popularly elected body chosen by the States and the District of Columbia on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. The Electoral College consists of 538 electors (one for each of 435 members of the House of Representatives and 100 Senators; and 3 for the District of Columbia). Each State's allotment of electors is equal to the number of House members to which it is entitled plus two Senators. Got that?
How you might ask, is the number of electors for each state determined? Some opponents of the Electoral College point out, quite correctly, its failure to accurately reflect the national popular will in several respects. Here is one of them: First, the distribution of Electoral votes in the College tends to over-represent people in rural States. This is because the number of Electors for each State is determined by the number of members it has in the House (which more or less reflects the State's population size) plus the number of members it has in the Senate (which is always two regardless of the State's population). The result is that in 1988, for example, the combined voting age population (3,119,000) of the seven least populous jurisdiction of Alaska, Delaware, the District of Columbia, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming carried the same voting strength in the Electoral College (21 Electoral votes) as the 9,614,000 persons of voting age in the State of Florida. Each Floridian's potential vote, then, carried about one third the weight of a potential vote in the other States listed. Does that sound fair?
At any rate, the slates of electors are generally chosen by the political parties. State laws vary on the appointment of electors. Neither the Constitution nor Federal law prescribe the manner in which each State appoints its electors other than directing that they be appointed on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. The States then prepare a list of the slate of electors for the candidate who receives the most popular votes on a Certificate of Ascertainment. The Governor of each State prepares seven original Certificates of Ascertainment. The States send one original, along with two authenticated copies or two additional originals to the Archivist of the United States at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) by registered mail. The Certificates of Ascertainment must be submitted as soon as practicable, but no later than the day after the meetings of the electors, which occur on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. My head is spinning!
A majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect the President and Vice President. Now get this- no Constitutional provision or Federal law requires electors to vote in accordance with the popular vote in their State. Imagine that! For instance, in the 1976 election, a Washington elector pledged to President Gerald Ford voted instead for Ronald Reagan. In the 1988 election, a West Virginia elector voted for Senator Lloyd Bentsen as President and for Governor Michael Dukakis as Vice President instead of the other way around. Some State laws do require electors to cast their votes according to the popular vote and provide that so-called "faithless electors" may be subject to fines or may be disqualified for casting an invalid vote and be replaced by a substitute elector.
Pretty amazing right? So a logical question to ask is does my vote for President and Vice President matter in the Electoral College system? Supposedly your vote helps decide which candidate receives your state's electoral votes. But remember, no Constitutional provision or Federal law requires electors to vote in accordance with the popular vote in their State. And in addition to that, we all are aware that fraud is rampant in the voting process- dead people are counted as registered voters, illegal immigrants are counted too. People vote more than once, ballots are “lost” and absentee ballots are not always included… and on and on. It seems strange to me that in this technologically sophisticated age we still can’t manage to get an accurate, fair process for registering voters and counting ballots! Is this really the best of the American system at work? Shame on us! This of course harkens back to what I said earlier about the dishonesty in government.
Ok, enough on this topic. My next post will be on something more uplifting. I don't know about you, but politics depresses me.
