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Nathan Trees
Mrs. Helen Smith
Advanced Placement English IV
22 September 2016
The Electoral College
The Electoral College has been an integral part of the election process in the United
States since the conception of the nation. Although highly controversial and scandal-ridden, it
continues to be a dominant force in American politics. It serves as the best example of the
intersection of Democracy and Republicanism in American society -- as Alexander Hamilton
said in his defense of the Electoral College, [The Electoral College ensures] the office of
President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the
requisite qualifications. This shows the subtle elitism felt by many founding fathers that many
men in the country are simply unfit to rule. It seems confusing to some: how could a candidate
recieve more votes but still lose? After an analysis of why it exists, however, it is much easier to
understand. Understanding the history, the process, and the timeline of the Electoral College is
important before examining its detriment to the democratic processes of America.
The Electoral College is first mentioned in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution. In this
section, the rules regulating the electors were established. For example, the quantity of electors
must be equal to their Senators and Representatives. The method of choosing such electors was
left to the state assemblies (https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleii). Although many
shifts to the Electoral College system have taken place, such as the addition of Washington, DC,
to the college; and more consistent and timely re-apportionment, the system has largely
continued on as normal. While many constitutional theorists assume the founding fathers saw the

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Presidential electors as a trustee model of representation -- a model of representation in which
residents of an area would entrust their best interest to an elector -- and would vote in their favor,
many see it as an elitist way of subverting the democracy of the United States.
The Electoral College is a system in which each state has electors. It starts at the statelevel party conventions. The conventions determine who will represent the state, provided the
party wins the popular vote of the state. Electors can be anybody except an elected or appointed
public official, and are more often than not loyal supporters of the party they are nominated to
represent. The number of electors is equal to the number of Senators and US Representatives
each state has. Surprisingly, when an American votes for their candidate in the primaries, they do
not cast their ballot for the President of the United States. Rather, they cast their ballot for the
slate of electors who have been determined by the state parties to support their respective
candidates in the Electoral College if the party gains the majority of votes in the Presidential
race. (https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/electors.html)
On the day of the Electoral College voting, electors go to their respective state houses on
the third Monday of December. In most states, they are pledged and expected to vote for the
candidates that the general public voted for. But interestingly enough they are not required to.
Separate ballots are cast for President and Vice President. The electoral vote results are counted,
and have to be certified by a session of Congress. That session is called a joint session and is
held on January 6th of the year after the election. The process, although tedious, reminds many
of the undemocratic overtones in the supposedly democratic voting systems of America.
Most contempt of the electoral college does not come from a single controversy. Rather,
it comes from the very idea of the Electoral College -- a system meant put in place to ensure the
elites are kept in power. It comes from the idea that voters in swing states are promised so much,

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as voters in safe states must sit and watch as the candidate that is likely to win their state never
visits. It comes from the idea that citizens are denied equal representation, as candidates can
focus priorities on serving a specific group of people to ensure re-election, instead of having to
serve all Americans equally (https://wallethub.com/edu/how-much-is-your-vote-worth/7932/).
Lastly, it comes from the fact that electors are not even bound to vote for the candidate their
constituency selected. These individuals, known as faithless electors, can vote for whoever
they want. Although it is extremely rare, such events have happened.
Just about 50 years after the birth of America, John Quincy Adams was elected President
-- despite not running for it. Andrew Jackson won the popular and electoral votes, but his victory
was not an electoral majority. Thus, the election went to the United States Congress, where
Adams was selected. In 1876, another controversy existed. Rutherford B. Hayes won the
electoral majority by 1, but lost the popular vote by nearly 250,000 votes. Again, in 1888,
Benjamin Harrison received 65 more electoral votes than his opponent, but lost the popular vote
by more than 90,000 votes. Luckily, it took over a hundred more years before the next
controversy took place -- George Bush v. Al Gore, but only sixteen years after that, another
controversy ensued.
In Bush v. Gore, it is commonly referred to as the entirety of the presidential race in
2000. The controversy started on November 8, 2000, the Florida Division of Elections reported
that Bush won with 48.8% of the vote in Florida, by a slim 1,784 votes. This small victory was
less than 0.5% of all the votes casted. So a manual recount occurred and led to a margin of 327
votes in Bushs favor. Florida's election laws allow a candidate to request to recount per county.
So Gore then requested 4 counties (Volusia, Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade) to a manual
recount. The four counties granted the request and began their manual recount, however florida

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law also requires counties to certify their results to the Florida secretary of state within the
deadline of seven days of the election. Several counties reported that they believed they could
not meet their deadline. On the day of the deadline, November 14, the Florida Circuit Court
ruled that pre-existing deadline was mandatory, but interestingly enough that the counties could
amend their returns at a later date. The Florida Circuit Court also ruled that the Secretary had the
decision to include any late amended results in the statewide certification but only after
"considering all attendant facts and circumstances,". Before the 5:00 pm deadline that day,
Volusia County had completed the manual recount and submitted it. Although at 5:00 pm on
November 14, The Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris announced publicly that she had
received all the results from all 67 counties, while the other 3 counties that were requested to
recount were still conducting their manual recounts. Harris then stated that she required any
county that would be submitting late results to submit by 2:00 pm the following day a statement
of the facts and circumstances that explained the late submission. Four more counties submitted
the written statements, and after review Harris decided that none of the late submission
statements justified an extension on the pre-existing November 14 deadline. She then announced
that after she received the results of the overseas absentee ballots from each county, she would
announce the final results on Sunday, November 18, 2000. On that day, she announced Bush the
winner. And the 25 electoral votes that ensued gave Bush the 271 votes in order to win the
presidency, over Gores 266. The reason that the election caused so much controversy is a perfect
mirror of what has happened in our own politics today. Gore won the Popular vote by 500,000
votes. This caused the electoral college to face heavy criticism and was the first time that the
mainstream media would cover and broadcast the controversy to the public.

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More recently, another disparity in the electoral college and popular votes exist. In 2016,
the Electoral College chose Donald Trump as the next President of the United States, despite the
fact that Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 2,000,000 votes.
(http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/11/21/election-results-electoralpopular-votes-trump-clinton/94214826/) And the gap is widening almost everyday for Clinton.
As ballots are counted her lead continues to grow, this is the most recent and current examples of
how the electoral college continues to go against what logically is a fair voting system ,
popular vote, the most common claim of the people shafted by the electoral college is that it does
not provide an accurate representation of the people, and this couldn't ring more clear than in
controversies such as this. The candidates of this election were so diverse and their support so
strong that we as a country should pay attention to the electoral college very closely. The amount
of Faithless electors has a high chance of increasing as opposed to the past amount. "I do think
that a byproduct would be a serious look into Electoral College reform," said Micheal Baca, who
is a democratic elector trying to raise awareness of the Anti-Trump movement between electors.
( http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/democrats-electoral-college-faithless-trump-231731)

In conclusion, the electoral college exists to ensure that the wrong person does not get
into power. However Judith Best describes the absurdity perfectly , The typical American does
not usually claim to understand much about the electoral college, its origins, or its consequences.
Still, pollsters regularly report their polls indicate that majorities of adult Americans would dump
the electoral college system in favor a direct one-person-one-vote system to elect american
presidents. People wonder, too, why such an antique system still exists in the cyberspace age and
question whether a better way cant be found to select presidents. (Best) However, with the

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copious amounts of information available, with the rising education levels in America, with the
overt partisanship in our nation, the Electoral College is not just outdated. The Electoral College
is unfair. It makes votes in one state better than votes in another state, and represents rural voters
a disproportionate amount. As the urbanization of America continues, and many move from the
countryside to the city, is it really fair to misrepresent Americans?