How
the Electoral College Works
The
following is the official word from the Federal Election Commission.
The Electoral College is a tidy system that effectively keeps Third
Party and Independent candidates from achieving recognition or power
and insures the ongoing monopoly of the Republican and Democratic
parties.
Individual
state
voting regulations further serve to limit our choice of
possible candidates to members of the major parties.
The current
workings of the Electoral College are the result of both design and
experience. As it now operates:
Each State
is allocated a number of Electors equal to the number of its U.S. Senators
(always 2) plus the number of its U.S. Representatives (which may change
each decade according to the size of each State's population as determined
in the Census).
The political
parties (or independent candidates) in each State submit to the State's
chief election official a list of individuals pledged to their candidate
for president and equal in number to the State's electoral vote. Usually,
the major political parties select these individuals either in their
State party conventions or through appointment by their State party
leaders while third parties and independent candidates merely designate
theirs.
Members
of Congress and employees of the federal government are prohibited from
serving as an Elector in order to maintain the balance between the legislative
and executive branches of the federal government.
After their
caucuses and primaries, the major parties nominate their candidates
for president and vice president in their national conventions traditionally
held in the summer preceding the election. (Third parties and independent
candidates follow different procedures according to the individual State
laws). The names of the duly nominated candidates are then officially
submitted to each State's chief election official so that they might
appear on the general election ballot.
On the
Tuesday following the first Monday of November in years divisible by
four, the people in each State cast their ballots for the party slate
of Electors representing their choice for president and vice president
(although as a matter of practice, general election ballots normally
say "Electors for" each set of candidates rather than list the individual
Electors on each slate).
Whichever
party slate wins the most popular votes in the State becomes that State's
Electors-so that, in effect, whichever presidential ticket gets the
most popular votes in a State wins all the Electors of that State. [The
two exceptions to this are Maine and Nebraska where two Electors are
chosen by statewide popular vote and the remainder by the popular vote
within each Congressional district].
On the
Monday following the second Wednesday of December (as established in
federal law) each State's Electors meet in their respective State capitals
and cast their electoral votes-one for president and one for vice president.
In order
to prevent Electors from voting only for "favorite sons" of their home
State, at least one of their votes must be for a person from outside
their State (though this is seldom a problem since the parties have
consistently nominated presidential and vice presidential candidates
from different States).
The electoral
votes are then sealed and transmitted from each State to the President
of the Senate who, on the following January 6, opens and reads them
before both houses of the Congress.
The candidate
for president with the most electoral votes, provided that it is an
absolute majority (one over half of the total), is declared president.
Similarly, the vice presidential candidate with the absolute majority
of electoral votes is declared vice president.
In the
event no one obtains an absolute majority of electoral votes for president,
the U.S. House of Representatives (as the chamber closest to the people)
selects the president from among the top three contenders with each
State casting only one vote and an absolute majority of the States being
required to elect. Similarly, if no one obtains an absolute majority
for vice president, then the U.S. Senate makes the selection from among
the top two contenders for that office.
At noon
on January 20, the duly elected president and vice president are sworn
into office.
Further
details on the history and current functioning of the Electoral College
are available in the second edition of Congressional Quarterly's Guide
to U.S. Elections, a real goldmine of information, maps, and statistics.
