|
|
The United
States Electoral College is the official name of the group of Presidential
Electors who are chosen every four years to cast the electoral vote and
thereby elect the President and Vice President of the United States. It was
established by Article Two, Section One of the United States Constitution,
which provides for a quadrennial election of Presidential Electors in each
state. The electoral process was modified in 1804 with the ratification of
the 12th Amendment and again in 1961 with the ratification of the 23rd
Amendment.
Election of President of the United States and Vice President of the United
States is indirect. Presidential Electors are chosen by the popular vote
every four years on Election Day. Although ballots list the names of the
presidential candidates, voters within the 50 states and the District of
Columbia are actually choosing Electors from their state when they vote for
President and Vice President. These Presidential Electors in turn cast the
official (electoral) votes for those two offices.
How states currently assign Electors
Presidential Electors are nominated by their state political
parties in the summer before the Popular Vote on Election Day. Each state
provides its own means for the nomination of Electors. In some states, such
as Oklahoma, the Electors are nominated in primaries the same way that other
candidates are nominated. Other states, such as Virginia and North Carolina,
nominate Electors in party conventions. In Pennsylvania, the campaign
committees of the candidates name their candidates for Presidential Elector
(an attempt to discourage faithless Electors). All states require the names
of all Electors to be filed with the Secretary of State (or equivalent) at
least a month prior to election day.
On election day, voters cast ballots for slates of Presidential Electors
pledged to the candidates for president and vice president. In most states,
the party that wins the state elects its entire slate of Electors. At the
time of the state canvass of the vote, the Secretary of State (or
equivalent) signs a special form called the Certificate of Ascertainment
which sets forth the people elected to the office of Presidential Elector,
along with the number of votes cast for every party's slate of Elector
nominees. These Certificates of Ascertainment are forwarded to the Office of
the Vice President to be used to verify that the people who cast the
electoral votes are in fact the people who were elected for that purpose.
Two states elect the Presidential Electors with a slightly different method.
Maine and Nebraska elect two Electors by a statewide ballot and choose their
remaining Electors by congressional district. The method has been used in
Maine since 1972 and Nebraska since 1996, though neither has split its
electoral votes in modern elections.
The Electoral College dilutes the votes of population centers that might
have different concerns from the rest of the country. The system is supposed
to require presidential candidates to appeal to many different types of
interests, rather than, say, the urban or rural voter only. The College
enabled the Founding Fathers to deftly incorporate the Connecticut
Compromise and three-fifths compromise into the system of choosing the
President and Vice President, sparing the convention further acrimony over
the issue of state representation.
In the Federalist Papers No. 39, James Madison argued that the Constitution
was designed to be a mixture of federal (state-based) and national
(population-based) government. The Congress would have two houses, one
federal and one national in character, while the President would be elected
by a mixture of the two modes, giving some electoral power to the states and
some to the people in general. Both the Congress and the President would be
elected by mixed federal and national means.
See Electoral
Map
|
|
