The Electoral College

The Electoral College is the constitutional mechanism by which Americans elect the President. Voters in each state choose electors, who then cast the formal votes. The system was designed by the Framers and modified by the Twelfth Amendment after the election of 1800.

Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution provides that the President is chosen not by direct national vote but by a body of electors apportioned among the states. Each state receives a number of electors equal to its total congressional delegation, two senators plus its representatives, with the District of Columbia receiving three under the Twenty-Third Amendment. Today there are 538 electors. A candidate needs 270 to win. The Framers designed the system as a compromise. A direct national vote risked giving large states too much influence. Selection by Congress would have tied the President too closely to the legislature. The Electoral College preserved federalism in the presidential selection process and gave each state a stake in the outcome. The system also reflected the Framers' hope that electors would be men of judgment who could deliberate independently. That hope did not survive the rise of political parties. The election of 1800 produced a tie between Thomas Jefferson and his running mate Aaron Burr because the original system did not distinguish presidential from vice presidential ballots. The Twelfth Amendment, ratified in 1804, fixed the problem by requiring separate ballots for the two offices. Most states award all their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the state, a winner-take-all system not required by the Constitution. Maine and Nebraska allocate some electors by congressional district. The Electoral College has produced five presidents who lost the national popular vote: John Quincy Adams in 1824, Rutherford Hayes in 1876, Benjamin Harrison in 1888, George W. Bush in 2000, and Donald Trump in 2016. Whether to abolish or reform the system has been argued in every generation. The Constitution makes change difficult: amending the College would require a two-thirds vote in Congress and ratification by three-quarters of the states.