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What is the Electoral College and what impact will it have on US elections?

The Electoral College, the process by which the American people actually select a president, is widely viewed as complex and confusing.

Why doesn't the candidate with the most votes automatically become the next US president?

To understand where the Electoral College comes from, one must first recognize that federalism is the fundamental foundation of the U.S. government.

Therefore, the lower house, the house of representatives, represents the mass of the American people and the upper house, the senate, represents the states.

Back in 1787, the Constitutional Convention debated the election of a president for the entire three and a half months that the convention existed. The smaller states refused to join a national government unless their states were represented equally.

A voter marks a ballot during the primary election and abortion referendum at a polling station in Wyandotte County in Kansas City, Kansas, U.S., August 2, 2022. (Credit: ERIC COX/REUTERS)

This was the origin of the Senate, in which each state has an equal representation of two senators, as well as the Electoral College – the “Congress away from home”, which reduces the power of the large states in the presidential election in proportion to the smaller ones.

The founding fathers were happy with this arrangement. Although it reduced the importance of the popular vote, the smaller states were able to achieve a significant increase in electoral votes via the Electoral College.

How is the president elected?

Each state is represented in the Electoral College just as it is in Congress.

For example, California has 54 votes in the Electoral College – 52 by population (as many as the number of representatives) and two more for its representation in the Senate.

Delaware, one of the smallest states, has three votes in the Electoral College – one because it has one representative and two because it has two senators (like all states).

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To become the next president, a candidate needs a majority in the Electoral College – 270 votes. In fact, there have been five times in U.S. history that the winner of the popular vote did not become president because the other candidate received the required number of votes in the Electoral College.

This last happened in 2016, when Hillary Clinton received almost 2.9 million more votes than Donald Trump.

However, many of those votes came from large states like California, which had already given all of its electoral college votes to Clinton.

Trump narrowly won the popular vote in states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, securing those states' votes and thus the presidency. The same “swing states” are once again in close competition in the current election.

Swing states are states in which both candidates have almost the same number of supporters. In almost all states, the electoral college is a winner-take-all principle: the candidate with the most votes receives all of that state's votes in the electoral college.

Therefore, candidates usually focus on these swing states because the turnover of a small number of voters could move that state into the candidate's column and contribute to electoral victory.

In the current election, seven states are considered swing states in the USA: Arizona (11 electoral college votes), Georgia (16 votes), Michigan (15 votes), Nevada (six votes), North Carolina (16 votes). , Pennsylvania (19 votes) and Wisconsin (10 votes).

The Jewish Swing Vote

The Jewish vote in America is also a swing vote. Although people previously identified very strongly with the Democratic Party, this is no longer a given.

It's entirely possible that the Jewish vote in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, once reliably Democratic, could transform those states.

Likewise, the Arab population, which is particularly large in Michigan, could help influence results there.

Therefore, in the eyes of its admirers in 1787, the Electoral College represented a brilliant plan to successfully unite national and state elements in selecting the nation's chief justice.

In 1979, former Senator Birch Bayh, with the support of then-President Jimmy Carter, tried to push through an amendment to overhaul the Electoral College system and have the presidential winner determined by a popular vote, but was unable to secure the required majority in Congress.

Clearly, the smaller states were (and are) anxious to maintain their advantage in the Electoral College.

In next week's election, it remains to be seen whether the Electoral College result will again deviate from the popular vote.

The author is James G. McDonald, Professor Emeritus of American History and former Chair of the Department of American Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of “The Electoral College at Philadelphia: The Evolution of an Ad Hoc Congress for the Selection of a President,” Journal of American History, Vol. 73, 1986. Prepared for print with assistance from Ellen Goldberg.



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