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| | === The Electoral College === | | === The Electoral College === |
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| | + | The "Electoral College" is how the Constitution requires Americans to elect a president every four years. The Electoral College gives each State the right to decide, for itself, how it will allocate its share of the vote for the candidates. |
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| | + | Today, there are a total of 538 total votes in the Electoral College, which are divided among the 50 States (plus several territories) based on a sum of their number of members in the House of Representatives and Senate. For example, New Jersey has 12 members of the House of Representatives and (like every State) has two U.S. Senators, for a total of 14 Electoral College votes. States with larger populations have a greater vote in the Electoral College: California has 55, Texas has 38, and Florida has 29. |
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| | + | Most states choose a "winner take all" system, whereby the candidate who wins the most votes in the State then receives ALL of the State's votes for president. The extremely close presidential election of 2000 between Bush and Gore illustrated how this works. |
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| | + | Because there are 538 total Electoral College votes, a candidate must obtain 270 Electoral College votes in order to win. In the presidential election of 2000, not counting Florida, Al Gore was ahead with 266 Electoral College votes to George W. Bush's 246 Electoral College votes. The vote in Florida was so close that it was impossible to official declare a winner on election night. |
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| | + | If Florida had a law giving each candidate the same percentage of the Florida's Electoral College votes as he won in the vote by the people, then Gore and Bush would have each received about 50% of the Election College votes from Florida, and Gore would have won the presidential election. |
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| | + | But instead Florida, like most States, votes with one voice in the Electoral College by casting all of its votes for the candidate who won the people's vote in Florida. This is similar to how a jury makes a decision for one side or the other, and similar to how the delegates voted at the Constitutional Convention, where each State had one vote based on a majority vote by the delegates from that State. So Florida, like most States, did not split its Electoral College votes between Bush and Gore, but instead cast all of its Electoral College votes for one or the other candidate. |
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| | + | If you set the rules for your State, would you have this type of "winner-takes-all" system? The advantages include preventing a candidate from taking the State for granted, and causing the candidate to try to win the State rather than simply attract some votes there. Florida gets more attention from the candidates by having its "winner take all" system than it would otherwise. This system is similar to sports contests, where fans prefer having a "winner" and a "loser", rather than a "tie" where neither side clearly won or lost. |
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| | + | There are other advantages to the Electoral College system. No national recounts of votes are required in close presidential elections under this system. In 1960, John F Kennedy received 34,220,984 votes, or 49.7%, compared with Richard Nixon, who won 34,108,157 votes, or 49.6%. Barely 100,000 votes, out of more than 68 million cast, separated the two candidates. In the absence of an Electoral College system, a nationwide recount would have taken many weeks and might have changed the result. But with the Electoral College, the overall outcome depended on the results in only one State, Illinois. Voting in States that were clearly won by Kennedy, or clearly won by Nixon, do not need to be questioned or recounted. |
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| | + | <section of the Constitution requires this> |
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| | == Full Faith and Credit Clause == | | == Full Faith and Credit Clause == |