Although the United States touts its status as one of the world's leading democracies, its citizens cannot directly elect a president. That task is left to the Electoral College, the complicated way Americans have chosen their president since the 18th century.
Contrary to its name, the Electoral College is more of a process than a system. Every four years, in the December following an election, its members (politicians and loyalists to mostly unknown parties) gather on the same day in all 50 states to vote for the president. Then they essentially disappear.
Criticism of the Electoral College has increased in recent years, as two Republican presidents (George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016) lost the popular vote and were elected president. But there are no signs that the US elections will change anytime soon.
Here's everything you need to know
What is the electoral college?
Article II of the United States Constitution specifies the process by which the President is elected.
Each state has a number of electors equal to the total number of representatives and senators in Congress. Washington DC receives three electoral votes. There are a total of 538 voters. A candidate needs 270 votes to win.
The constitution says state legislatures can choose how to reward their electors. All but two states have long chosen to use the winner-take-all system: The winner of their state's popular vote gets all the electoral votes.
To further complicate matters, two states, Maine and Nebraska, reward their electors differently. In both states, the state winner receives two Electoral College votes. Each state awards its remaining electors (two in Maine and three in Nebraska) to the winner of each of the state's congressional districts.
Why the United States? Is there an electoral college?
When the Founding Fathers met in Philadelphia in 1787 to draft the United States Constitution, they had great difficulty finding a system for electing an executive head. Initially they proposed a plan to elect the president of Congress. But that raised concerns that an executive branch designed to be independent of Congress would be subject to it.
A group of representatives also wants to elect the president by direct popular vote. But the idea never gained widespread support and was repeatedly dismissed during the convention, historian Alexander Keyser wrote in his book. Why do we still have the Electoral College?
There were several reasons why this idea was not very popular. First, the convention adopted the racist three-fifths compromise in which slaves counted as three-fifths of a person for population purposes. This was a victory for the southern states, where slaves made up a significant portion of the population. A popular vote system would have been disadvantageous to the southern states because they had fewer voters.
Keizer says there were concerns about giving too much power to large states and voters not being able to learn about candidates from different states. He writes that it was a debate about procedures rather than a debate about political rights.
At the end of the convention, a committee of 11 delegates was appointed to address unresolved issues, one of which was how to elect a president. They proposed a version of what we understand today as the Electoral College.
“This brief history of birth makes clear that the presidential system enshrined in the Constitution involves a web of compromises, born of months of debate among men who disagreed with each other and were unsure of the best way to proceed,” Keyser wrote. “In practice, it was a consensus second choice, in part because of the remarkably complex details of the electoral process, which resulted in compromises or gestures between constituencies and specific beliefs.”
What is an undecided state?
States where a presidential candidate has a good chance of winning are usually “swing states.”
In the 2024 election, there are seven swing states: Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes), Wisconsin (10 electoral votes), Michigan (15 electoral votes), Georgia (16 electoral votes), North Carolina (16 electoral votes), and Arizona ( 11 electoral votes), and Nevada (six electoral votes). Whichever candidate wins the election must choose some combination of those states, which is why candidates spend most of their time and resources there. Joe Biden won all of those states to lock down North Carolina in the 2020 election.
The idea of a swing state can also change over time as demographics change. Until recently, for example, Ohio and Florida were considered swing states, but they are now considered more solidly Republican. Michigan was considered a Democratic stronghold until Donald Trump won in 2016.
Does the Electoral College allow a minority government?
There have been five elections in United States history (1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016) in which the presidential candidate did not receive the popular vote. This led to widespread recognition of the system's inequalities and pressure from some to abolish the Electoral College entirely.
One strong criticism is that the system dilutes the influence of the presidential vote depending on where one lives. One voter in California represents more than 726,000 people. In Wyoming, one voter represents 194,000 people.
Another criticism is that the system allows a small number of Americans to decide the outcome of the presidential election. In 2020, about 44,000 votes were allowed between Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona. Biden must win the Electoral College. Such a narrow margin is unusual in an election in which 154.6 million people voted.
In 2016, about 80,000 votes combined gave Trump a margin of victory in key states.
Should voters vote for a particular candidate?
State political parties elect people to serve as electors for what they believe are party leaders, and they go rogue and vote for none other than the party's candidates. However, sometimes voters gave their votes to someone else. In 2016, for example, there were seven voters who voted for candidates other than those promised. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, it was the first time since 1972 that there was a no-confidence vote.
Many states have laws requiring voters to vote for the candidate they pledge to. In 1952, the U.S. Supreme Court held that states could force voters to vote for a party's candidate. And in 2020, the court said states could penalize voters who don't vote for a candidate they pledged.
How did the Electoral College last so long?
Shortly after the Electoral College went into effect, efforts were made to change it. “Constitutional amendments were promoted more than a decade after the Constitution was ratified,” Keyser said. “1,000 or more constitutional amendments have been introduced since 1800 to change or eliminate it. Some of them are close.” (In 2019 there were more than 700 attempts, according to the Congressional Research Service.)
When the idea of a national referendum was proposed in 1816, Keyser said, the southern states opposed it. Slaves continued to be granted rights in the Electoral College, but could not vote. “They will lose the extra bonus they received on behalf of their slaves,” he said.
After the Civil War, African Americans legally gained the right to vote, but Southern states continued to prevent them from voting. A national referendum would have reduced their influence on the overall outcome, so they continued to support the Electoral College system.
The country came close to abolishing the Electoral College in the late 1960s. In 1968, segregationist Southern Governor George Wallace nearly threw the system into chaos by winning enough votes to deny any candidate a majority in the College. Electoral. The United States House of Representatives approved the proposed amendment by 339 votes in favor and 70 against. But the measure stalled in the Senate, where senators representing southern states implemented a filibuster.
According to the Washington Post, this sparked continued protests in favor of a national referendum that would allow southern whites to continue exercising power. President Jimmy Carter eventually approved the proposal, but failed to get enough votes in the Senate in 1979 (Joe Biden was one of the senators who voted against it).
“It's not like we're going to suddenly discover that this system doesn't really work,” Keyser said.
Is there now a chance to get rid of the Electoral College?
The most important effort to eliminate the Electoral College today is the National Referendum Agreement. The idea is that states must agree to give their electorate to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of the outcome of their particular state. The agreement will come into force when the states with a total of 270 electoral votes join together, enough to decide the winner of the elections.
So far, 16 states and Washington DC (a total of 205 electoral votes) have joined the effort.
But the path to the project is uncertain. All non-union states have a Republican governor or legislature. Legal observers have questioned the constitutionality of such a provision, which will soon be brought before the U.S. Supreme Court.
