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The Electoral College Explained

It’s the Electoral College, not the national popular vote, that determines who wins the presidency.

significance of the electoral college essay

By Allyson Waller

It remains one of the most surprising facts about voting in the United States: While the popular vote elects members of Congress, mayors, governors, state legislators and even more obscure local officials, it does not determine the winner of the presidency , the highest office in the land.

That important decision ultimately falls to the Electoral College . When Americans cast their ballots, they are actually voting for a slate of electors appointed by their state’s political parties who are pledged to support that party’s candidate. (They don’t always do so.)

This leads to an intense focus on battleground states , as candidates look to boost their electoral advantage by targeting states that can help them reach the needed 270 votes of the 538 up for grabs. The Electoral College also inspires many what-if scenarios, some of them more likely than others.

Where does the 2020 electoral count stand?

On Dec. 14, as electors gathered across the country to cast their ballots, Joseph R. Biden Jr. had earned 306 electoral votes , 36 more than needed to win. President Trump had earned 232 electoral votes. Mr. Biden was leading in the popular vote, with more than 81 million votes. More than 74 million votes had been counted for Mr. Trump.

The New York Times called the last two states on its map on Nov. 13: Georgia’s 16 electoral votes for Mr. Biden and North Carolina’s 15 for Mr. Trump.

Can a president lose the popular vote but still win the election?

Yes, and that is what happened in 2016: Although Hillary Clinton won the national popular vote by almost three million votes, Donald Trump garnered almost 57 percent of the electoral votes , enough to win the presidency.

The same thing happened in 2000. Although Al Gore won the popular vote, George W. Bush earned more electoral votes after a contested Florida recount and a Supreme Court decision .

And in 1888, Benjamin Harrison defeated the incumbent president, Grover Cleveland, in the Electoral College, despite losing the popular vote. Cleveland ran again four years later and won back the White House.

Other presidents who lost the popular vote but won the presidency include John Quincy Adams and Rutherford B. Hayes in the elections of 1824 and 1876.

The House of Representatives picked Adams over Andrew Jackson, who won the popular vote but only a plurality of the Electoral College. A special commission named by the House chose Hayes over Samuel J. Tilden, after 20 electoral votes in Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina were disputed.

The Electoral College has also awarded the presidency to candidates with a plurality of the popular vote (under 50 percent) in a number of cases, notably Abraham Lincoln in 1860, John F. Kennedy in 1960 and Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996.

What happens in a tie?

Because there is now an even number of electoral votes, a tie is feasible. If that happens in the Electoral College, then the decision goes to the newly seated House of Representatives, with each state voting as a unit.

Although it’s not detailed in the Constitution, each state delegation would vote on which candidate to support as a group, with the plurality carrying the day, said Akhil Reed Amar, a professor of law and political science at Yale University. If there is a tie vote in a state’s delegation, the state’s vote would not count. A presidential candidate needs at least 26 votes to win.

Currently , Republicans control 26 state delegations, while Democrats control 22. Pennsylvania is tied between Republican and Democratic representatives, and Michigan has seven Democrats, six Republicans and one independent. That could change on Nov. 3 of course, because all House seats are up for election.

The decision on vice president goes to the newly elected Senate, with each senator casting a vote. Ultimately, any disputes about the procedure could land everything in the Supreme Court.

What if electors break their pledge?

People call them “faithless electors.” In 2016, seven electors — 5 Democrats and 2 Republicans — broke their promises to vote for their party’s nominee, the most ever in history. They voted for a variety of candidates not on the ballot: Bernie Sanders, Colin Powell and Ron Paul, among others. It did not change the outcome.

Whether electors should be able to change their positions has been heavily debated, so much so that the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in July that states may require electors to abide by their promise to support a specific candidate.

Some scholars have said they do not wholeheartedly agree with the decision, arguing that it endangers an elector’s freedom to make decisions they want and that electors are usually picked for their loyalty to a candidate or party.

“They will do as promised if the candidates do a very good job vetting them and picking people who are rock-solid,” Professor Amar said.

Thirty-three states and the District of Columbia have laws that require electors to vote for their pledged candidate. Some states replace electors and cancel their votes if they break their pledge.

Certain penalties exist in other states. In New Mexico , electors can be charged with a felony if they abandon their pledge, and in Oklahoma a faithless elector could face a misdemeanor charge.

How did this system evolve?

The Electoral College was born at the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.

The nation’s founders hoped to quell the formation of powerful factions and political parties, and they wanted a mechanism that did not rely solely on popular majorities or Congress. Despite the name, it is not a college in the modern educational sense , but refers to a collegium or group of colleagues.

The system had some unusual results from the start, as evident in the election of 1800 , a tie in which Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr received an equal number of electoral votes. Congress broke the tie, and Jefferson became president and Burr became vice president. (Until the ratification of the 12th Amendment in 1804, the candidate with the second-highest number of electoral votes became vice president.)

Today, electors meet in their respective states on the first Monday after the second Wednesday of December — Dec. 14 this year — to cast separate ballots for president and vice president, with the candidates who receive a majority of votes being elected.

Electors are chosen every four years in the months leading up to Election Day by their respective state’s political parties. Processes vary from state to state, with some choosing electors during state Republican and Democratic conventions. Some states list electors’ names on the general election ballot.

The process of choosing electors can be an “insider’s game,” said Kimberly Wehle, a professor at the University of Baltimore and the author of “What You Need to Know About Voting and Why.” They are often state legislators, party leaders or donors, she said.

How many electoral votes does it take to win?

The important number is 270. A total of 538 electoral votes are in play across all 50 states and Washington, D.C. The total number of electoral votes assigned to each state varies depending on population, but each state has at least three, and the District of Columbia has had three electors since 1961.

Are all states winner-take-all?

Most are, and it helps to think of voting on a state-by-state basis, Professor Amar said.

“It’s just like in tennis,” he said. “It’s how many sets you win and not how many games or points you win. You have to win the set, and in our system, you have to win the state.”

Two exceptions are Maine and Nebraska , which rely on congressional districts to divvy up electoral votes. The winner of the state’s popular vote gets two electoral votes, and one vote is awarded to the winner of the popular vote in each congressional district.

There are arguments that the states with smaller populations are overrepresented in the Electoral College, because every state gets at least 3 electors regardless of population. In a stark example, sparsely populated Wyoming has three votes and a population of about 580,000, giving its individual voters far more clout in the election than their millions of counterparts in densely populated states like Florida, California and New York. And the American citizens who live in territories like Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands are not represented by any electors.

“When you talk about the Electoral College shaping the election, it shapes the election all the time because it puts the focus on certain states and not others,” said Alexander Keyssar, a professor of history and social policy at Harvard University.

Will the system ever change?

For years there have been debates about abolishing the Electoral College entirely, with the 2016 election bringing the debate back to the surface. It was even a talking point among 2020 Democratic presidential candidates .

The idea has public support, but faces a partisan divide, since Republicans currently benefit from the electoral clout of less populous, rural states.

Gallup reports 61 percent of Americans support abolishing the Electoral College in favor of the popular vote. However, that support diverges widely based on political parties, with support from 89 percent of Democrats and only 23 percent of Republicans.

One route would be a constitutional amendment, which would require two-thirds approval from both the House and Senate and ratification by the states, or a constitutional convention called by two-thirds of the state legislatures.

Some hope to reduce the Electoral College’s importance without an amendment. Fifteen states and the District of Columbia, which together control 196 electoral votes, have signed on to an interstate compact in which they pledge to grant their votes to the winner of the national popular vote. (Voters in one of those states, Colorado, on Nov. 3 backed membership in the compact after opponents of the measure collected enough signatures to put the law on the ballot as a referendum.) The local laws would take effect only once the compact has enough states to total 270 electoral votes.

Lastly, an election-related case could find its way to the Supreme Court, which would lend greater importance to the judicial makeup of the court , Professor Wehle said.

“It only takes five people with life tenure to actually amend this Constitution through a judicial opinion,” she said.

Allyson Waller is part of the 2020-2021 New York Times Fellowship class and is a general assignment reporter on the Express desk. More about Allyson Waller

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The Electoral College Explained

A national popular vote would help ensure that every vote counts equally, making American democracy more representative.

Tim Lau

  • Electoral College Reform

In the United States, the presidency is decided not by the national popular vote but by the Electoral College — an outdated and convoluted system that sometimes yields results contrary to the choice of the majority of American voters. On five occasions, including in two of the last six elections, candidates have won the Electoral College, and thus the presidency, despite losing the nationwide popular vote. 

The Electoral College has racist origins — when established, it applied the three-fifths clause, which gave a long-term electoral advantage to slave states in the South — and continues to dilute the political power of voters of color. It incentivizes presidential campaigns to focus on a relatively small number of “swing states.” Together, these dynamics have spurred debate about the system’s democratic legitimacy.

To make the United States a more representative democracy, reformers are pushing for the presidency to be decided instead by the national popular vote, which would help ensure that every voter counts equally.

What is the Electoral College and how does it work?

The Electoral College is a group of intermediaries designated by the Constitution to select the president and vice president of the United States. Each of the 50 states is allocated presidential electors  equal to the number of its representatives and senators . The ratification of the 23rd Amendment in 1961 allowed citizens in the District of Columbia to participate in presidential elections as well; they have consistently had three electors.

In total, the Electoral College comprises  538 members . A presidential candidate must win a majority of the electoral votes cast to win — at least 270 if all 538 electors vote.

The Constitution grants state legislatures the power to decide how to appoint their electors. Initially, a number of state legislatures directly  selected their electors , but during the 19th century they transitioned to the popular vote, which is now used by  all 50 states . In other words, each awards its electoral votes to the presidential candidate chosen by the state’s voters.

Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia use a winner-take-all system, awarding all of their electoral votes to the popular vote winner in the state. Maine and Nebraska award one electoral vote to the popular vote winner in each of their congressional districts and their remaining two electoral votes to the statewide winner. Under this system, those two states sometimes split their electoral votes among candidates.

In the months leading up to the general election, the political parties in each state typically nominate their own slates of would-be electors. The state’s popular vote determines which party’s slates will be made electors. Members of the Electoral College  meet and vote in their respective states  on the Monday after the second Wednesday in December after Election Day. Then, on January 6, a joint session of Congress meets at the Capitol to count the electoral votes and declare the outcome of the election, paving the way for the presidential inauguration on January 20.

How was the Electoral College established?

The Constitutional Convention in 1787 settled on the Electoral College as a compromise between delegates who thought Congress should select the president and others who favored a direct nationwide popular vote. Instead, state legislatures were entrusted with appointing electors.

Article II  of the Constitution, which established the executive branch of the federal government, outlined the framers’ plan for the electing the president and vice president. Under this plan, each elector cast two votes for president; the candidate who received the most votes became the president, with the second-place finisher becoming vice president — which led to administrations in which political opponents served in those roles. The process was overhauled in 1804 with the ratification of the  12th Amendment , which required electors to cast votes separately for president and vice president. 

How did slavery shape the Electoral College?

At the time of the Constitutional Convention, the northern states and southern states had  roughly equal populations . However, nonvoting enslaved people made up about one-third of the southern states’ population. As a result, delegates from the South objected to a direct popular vote in presidential elections, which would have given their states less electoral representation.

The debate contributed to the convention’s eventual decision to establish the Electoral College, which applied the  three-fifths compromise  that had already been devised for apportioning seats in the House of Representatives. Three out of five enslaved people were counted as part of a state’s total population, though they were nonetheless prohibited from voting.

Wilfred U. Codrington III, an assistant professor of law at Brooklyn Law School and a Brennan Center fellow,  writes  that the South’s electoral advantage contributed to an “almost uninterrupted trend” of presidential election wins by southern slaveholders and their northern sympathizers throughout the first half of the 19th century. After the Civil War, in 1876, a contested Electoral College outcome was settled by a compromise in which the House awarded Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency with the understanding that he would withdraw military forces from the Southern states. This led to the end of Reconstruction and paved the way for racial segregation under Jim Crow laws.

Today, Codrington argues, the Electoral College continues to dilute the political power of Black voters: “Because the concentration of black people is highest in the South, their preferred presidential candidate is virtually assured to lose their home states’ electoral votes. Despite black voting patterns to the contrary, five of the six states whose populations are 25 percent or more black have been reliably red in recent presidential elections. … Under the Electoral College, black votes are submerged.”

What are faithless electors?  

Ever since the 19th century reforms, states have expected their electors to honor the will of the voters. In other words, electors are now pledged to vote for the winner of the popular vote in their state. However, the Constitution does not require them to do so, which allows for scenarios in which “faithless electors” have voted against the popular vote winner in their states. As of 2016, there have been  90 faithless electoral votes  cast out of 23,507 in total across all presidential elections. The 2016 election saw a record-breaking  seven faithless electors , including three who voted for former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was not a presidential candidate at the time.  

Currently, 33 states and the District of Columbia  require their presidential electors  to vote for the candidate to whom they are pledged. Only 5 states, however, impose a penalty on faithless electors, and only 14 states provide for faithless electors to be removed or for their votes to be canceled. In July 2020, the Supreme Court  unanimously upheld  existing state laws that punish or remove faithless electors.

What happens if no candidate wins a majority of Electoral College votes?

If no ticket wins a majority of Electoral College votes, the presidential election is  sent to the House of Representatives  for a runoff. Unlike typical House practice, however, each state only gets one vote, decided by the party that controls the state’s House delegation. Meanwhile, the vice-presidential race is decided in the Senate, where each member has one vote. This scenario  has not transpired since 1836 , when the Senate was tasked with selecting the vice president after no candidate received a majority of electoral votes.

Are Electoral College votes distributed equally between states?

Each state is allocated a number of electoral votes based on the total size of its congressional delegation. This benefits smaller states, which have at least three electoral votes — including two electoral votes tied to their two Senate seats, which are guaranteed even if they have a small population and thus a small House delegation. Based on population trends, those disparities will likely increase as the most populous states are expected to account for an even greater share of the U.S. population in the decades ahead. 

What did the 2020 election reveal about the Electoral College?

In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential race, Donald Trump and his allies fueled an effort to overturn the results of the election, spreading repeated lies about widespread voter fraud. This included attempts by a number of state legislatures to nullify some of their states’ votes, which often targeted jurisdictions with large numbers of Black voters. Additionally, during the certification process for the election, some members of Congress also objected to the Electoral College results, attempting to throw out electors from certain states. While these efforts ultimately failed, they revealed yet another vulnerability of the election system that stems from the Electoral College.

The  Electoral Count Reform Act , enacted in 2023, addresses these problems. Among other things, it clarifies which state officials have the power to appoint electors, and it bars any changes to that process after Election Day, preventing state legislatures from setting aside results they do not like. The new law also raises the threshold for consideration of objections to electoral votes. It is now one-fifth of each chamber instead of one senator and one representative.  Click here for more on the changes made by the Electoral Count Reform Act.

What are ways to reform the Electoral College to make presidential elections more democratic?

Abolishing the Electoral College outright would require a constitutional amendment. As a workaround, scholars and activist groups have rallied behind the  National Popular Vote Interstate Compact  (NPV), an effort that started after the 2000 election. Under it, participating states would  commit to awarding their electoral votes  to the winner of the national popular vote.

In other words, the NPV would formally retain the Electoral College but render it moot, ensuring that the winner of the national popular vote also wins the presidency. If enacted, the NPV would incentivize presidential candidates to expand their campaign efforts nationwide, rather than focus only on a small number of swing states.

For the NPV to take effect, it must first be adopted by states that control at least 270 electoral votes. In 2007, Maryland became the first state to enact the compact. As of 2019, a total of 19 states and Washington, DC, which collectively account for 196 electoral votes, have joined.

The public has consistently supported a nationwide popular vote. A 2020 poll by Pew Research Center, for example, found that  58 percent of adults  prefer a system in which the presidential candidate who receives the most votes nationwide wins the presidency.

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Why the Electoral College exists

Every four years, people head to the polls to vote for the next President of the United States. However, the popular vote doesn't directly elect any candidate. Instead, citizens are voting for a slate of electors, who have promised to cast their states' votes after the general election. Today, the Electoral College system is very controversial, leading many people to ask: why does it exist at all? That answer lies in the history of the Constitution and how its creators originally believed America's brand-new government should run and how its leader should be elected. As it turns out, the Electoral College was just as contentious in 1787 as it is today.

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Electoral College

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Electoral College History

How did we get the electoral college.

The Founding Fathers established the Electoral College in the Constitution, in part, as a compromise between the election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens. However, the term “electoral college” does not appear in the Constitution. Article II of the Constitution and the 12th Amendment refer to “electors,” but not to the “electoral college.”

Since the Electoral College process is part of the original design of the U.S. Constitution it would be necessary to pass a Constitutional amendment to change this system.

The ratification of the 12th Amendment , the expansion of voting rights, and the States’ use of the popular vote to determine who will be appointed as electors have each substantially changed the process.

Many different proposals to alter the Presidential election process have been offered over the years, such as direct nation-wide election by the eligible voters, but none has been passed by Congress and sent to the States for ratification as a Constitutional amendment. Under the most common method for amending the Constitution, an amendment must be proposed by a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress and ratified by three-fourths of the States.

What proposals have been made to change the Electoral College process?

Reference sources indicate that over the past 200 years more than 700 proposals have been introduced in Congress to reform or eliminate the Electoral College. There have been more proposals for Constitutional amendments on changing the Electoral College than on any other subject. The American Bar Association has criticized the Electoral College as “archaic” and “ambiguous” and its polling showed 69 percent of lawyers favored abolishing it in 1987. But surveys of political scientists have supported continuation of the Electoral College. Public opinion polls have shown Americans favored abolishing it by majorities of 58 percent in 1967; 81 percent in 1968; and 75 percent in 1981.

Opinions on the viability of the Electoral College system may be affected by attitudes toward third parties. Third parties have not fared well in the Electoral College system. For example, third party candidates with regional appeal, such as Governor Thurmond in 1948 and Governor Wallace in 1968, won blocs of electoral votes in the South, but neither come close to seriously challenging the major party winner, although they may have affected the overall outcome of the election.

The last third party, or splinter party, candidate to make a strong showing was Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 (Progressive, also known as the Bull Moose Party). He finished a distant second in Electoral and popular votes (taking 88 of the 266 electoral votes needed to win at the time). Although Ross Perot won 19 percent of the popular vote nationwide in 1992, he did not win any electoral votes since he was not particularly strong in any one state. In 2016, Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate, qualified for the ballot in all 50 States and the District of Columbia but also failed to win any electoral votes. 

Any candidate who wins a majority or plurality of the popular vote nationwide has a good chance of winning in the Electoral College, but there are no guarantees (see the results of 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016 elections).

Where can I find the names and voting records of presidential electors for all previous Presidential elections back to 1789?

OFR is not aware of a centralized, comprehensive source.