How Americans elect their president

By Alex P. Vidal

 

“It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.”—Joseph Stalin

 

WHEN we cover the actual U.S. Presidential Election on November 3, we will also be sharing our stories to our blogs on a regular basis until the new president will be inaugurated in January 2021.

In the previous U.S. elections, some broadcast entities from the Philippines requested fresh data, facts, and other information direct from those accredited to officially cover the world’s much-awaited election rather than rely on CNN and other international web news sources.

A lot of people outside the United States still don’t understand why a winner in the popular votes does not automatically become the new or reelected president in the United States and some broadcast entities needed to explain this to their listeners.

For instance in the 2016 election, while heavily favored Hillary Clinton of the Democratic Party got 2.87 million more votes than Republican Party’s Donald Trump, the billionaire businessman received the majority in the Electoral College and won upset victories in the pivotal Rust Belt region.

Mr. Trump received ultimately 304 electoral votes and Clinton 227, as two faithless electors defected from Trump and five defected from Clinton.

 

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Here’s a closer look at how Americans elect their president.

When they cast their votes for president and vice president, Americans are in reality directing other people called “electors” to vote for the candidate who receives the most votes in their state.

The political party of the winning candidate—reelectionist President Trump or Joseph Biden in the 2020 election—in each state then sends its preselected electors to the state capital to vote.

This is the Electoral College, and its members elect the president and vice president of the United States.

It was the framers of the U.S. Constitution that established the Electoral College in the Charter to forge a compromise between those who wanted the president to be elected by members of Congress and those who wanted a president elected by a popular vote.

There are 538 electors that constitute the Electoral College today.

Each state is allocated electors equal to its number of representatives in the U.S. House of Representatives (currently a total of 435) plus its two senators (a total of 100).

The District of Columbia is also allocated three electors.

These numbers can change every 10 years, based on the results of the census.

US State laws differ on how electors are chosen.

 

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Here’s more: Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia have a winner-take-all policy that the Electoral College must follow.

That means that a candidate who wins, say, 51 percent of the state’s popular vote is awarded 100 percent of the state’s electors.

Since the nation’s founding, hundreds of proposals to reform or eliminate the Electoral College have aimed to change how Americans elect a president.

But since the process is defined in the Constitution, only an amendment can change the system.

Passing a constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds majority vote in the House of Representatives and in the Senate plus the approval of three-quarters of the states, or a constitutional convention called by two-thirds of state legislatures which has never happened.

A Pew Research Center study found in March 2020 that a majority of U.S. adults (58 percent) were in favor of amending the Constitution so the presidential candidate who receives the most votes nationwide wins, while 40 percent preferred to keep the current system in which the candidate who receives the most Electoral College votes declares victory.

Electoral votes are allocated among the States based on the Census, according to USA.gov.

Every State is allocated a number of votes equal to the number of senators and representatives in its U.S. Congressional delegation—two votes for its senators in the U.S. Senate plus a number of votes equal to the number of its Congressional districts.

Under the 23rd Amendment of the Constitution, the District of Columbia is allocated three electors and treated like a State for purposes of the Electoral College.

 

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Each State (which includes the District of Columbia for this discussion) decides how to appoint its electors. Currently all States use the popular vote results from the November general election to decide which political party chooses the individuals who are appointed.

All States, except for Maine and Nebraska have a winner-take-all policy where the State looks only at the overall winner of the state-wide popular vote.  Maine and Nebraska, however, appoint individual electors based on the winner of the popular vote for each Congressional district and then 2 electors based on the winner of the overall state-wide popular vote.

Even though Maine and Nebraska don’t use a winner-take-all system, it is rare for either State to have a split vote. Each has done so once: Nebraska in 2008 and Maine in 2016.

The allocations below are based on the 2010 Census. They are effective for the 2012, 2016, and 2020 presidential elections. Total Electoral Votes:  538;  Majority Needed to Elect: 270.

 

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two dailies in Iloilo)