How Can a Candidate Win the Popular Vote and Still Lose the Election
The Electoral College Explained
It's the Balloter College, not the national pop vote, that determines who wins the presidency.
It remains one of the about surprising facts well-nigh voting in the U.s.: While the popular vote elects members of Congress, mayors, governors, country legislators and even more than obscure local officials, it does not determine the winner of the presidency, the highest office in the state.
That important decision ultimately falls to the Balloter College. When Americans cast their ballots, they are actually voting for a slate of electors appointed past their country'southward political parties who are pledged to back up that party'due south candidate. (They don't always practice so.)
This leads to an intense focus on battleground states, equally candidates look to heave their balloter advantage by targeting states that can help them reach the needed 270 votes of the 538 up for grabs. The Balloter College also inspires many what-if scenarios, some of them more than likely than others.
Where does the 2022 electoral count stand?
On Dec. 14, as electors gathered beyond the country to cast their ballots, Joseph R. Biden Jr. had earned 306 electoral votes, 36 more 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 one thousand thousand votes had been counted for Mr. Trump.
The New York Times called the last ii states on its map on Nov. thirteen: Georgia'south sixteen electoral votes for Mr. Biden and North Carolina's 15 for Mr. Trump.
Tin a president lose the pop vote simply nevertheless win the election?
Yes, and that is what happened in 2016: Although Hillary Clinton won the national pop vote past nearly iii million votes, Donald Trump garnered almost 57 percentage 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 balloter votes later a contested Florida recount and a Supreme Courtroom conclusion.
And in 1888, Benjamin Harrison defeated the incumbent president, Grover Cleveland, in the Electoral College, despite losing the popular vote. Cleveland ran once again iv 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 Business firm of Representatives picked Adams over Andrew Jackson, who won the pop vote but only a plurality of the Electoral College. A special committee named by the Business firm chose Hayes over Samuel J. Tilden, after 20 electoral votes in Florida, Louisiana and Due 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 Nib Clinton in 1992 and 1996.
What happens in a tie?
Because there is now an even number of balloter votes, a tie is viable. If that happens in the Electoral College, then the decision goes to the newly seated House of Representatives, with each land voting as a unit.
Although it'due south not detailed in the Constitution, each state delegation would vote on which candidate to support as a group, with the plurality conveying the day, said Akhil Reed Amar, a professor of police and political science at Yale University. If there is a necktie vote in a land'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 i independent. That could change on Nov. three of class, because all Firm seats are upwardly for election.
The determination on vice president goes to the newly elected Senate, with each senator casting a vote. Ultimately, whatsoever disputes about the procedure could land everything in the Supreme Court.
What if electors break their pledge?
People phone call them "faithless electors." In 2016, seven electors — 5 Democrats and 2 Republicans — bankrupt their promises to vote for their political party's nominee, the about ever in history. They voted for a variety of candidates non on the ballot: Bernie Sanders, Colin Powell and Ron Paul, among others. It did not modify the outcome.
Whether electors should be able to change their positions has been heavily debated, so much then that the Supreme Courtroom unanimously ruled in July that states may require electors to abide by their promise to support a specific candidate.
Some scholars have said they practise non wholeheartedly concord with the determination, arguing that it endangers an elector's freedom to brand decisions they want and that electors are ordinarily picked for their loyalty to a candidate or political party.
"They will exercise as promised if the candidates do a very good job vetting them and picking people who are rock-solid," Professor Amar said.
30-three states and the District of Columbia have laws that require electors to vote for their pledged candidate. Some states supersede electors and abolish their votes if they break their pledge.
Sure penalties exist in other states. In New Mexico, electors can be charged with a felony if they carelessness their pledge, and in Oklahoma a faithless elector could face a misdemeanor charge.
How did this system evolve?
The Electoral Higher was built-in at the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
The nation'due south founders hoped to quell the germination of powerful factions and political parties, and they wanted a mechanism that did non rely solely on popular majorities or Congress. Despite the name, it is non a college in the mod educational sense, but refers to a collegium or group of colleagues.
The system had some unusual results from the start, as axiomatic in the ballot 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 2nd-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. xiv this yr — to cast separate ballots for president and vice president, with the candidates who receive a bulk of votes being elected.
Electors are chosen every four years in the months leading upwardly to Election Day by their respective country'south political parties. Processes vary from state to land, with some choosing electors during state Republican and Democratic conventions. Some states list electors' names on the general election election.
The process of choosing electors can exist an "insider's game," said Kimberly Wehle, a professor at the University of Baltimore and the writer of "What Y'all Demand to Know Nigh Voting and Why." They are oft land legislators, party leaders or donors, she said.
How many electoral votes does information technology take to win?
The important number is 270. A total of 538 balloter 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, merely each state has at to the lowest degree iii, 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-past-land basis, Professor Amar said.
"It's just like in tennis," he said. "It'southward how many sets you lot win and not how many games or points you win. Y'all have to win the ready, 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 1 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 three electors regardless of population. In a stark case, sparsely populated Wyoming has three votes and a population of near 580,000, giving its individual voters far more ascendancy 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.Southward. Virgin Islands are non represented by whatever electors.
"When yous talk almost the Balloter College shaping the election, information technology shapes the election all the time considering it puts the focus on certain states and not others," said Alexander Keyssar, a professor of history and social policy at Harvard Academy.
Will the organization ever change?
For years there have been debates about abolishing the Electoral Higher entirely, with the 2022 election bringing the debate back to the surface. It was even a talking indicate amongst 2022 Democratic presidential candidates.
The idea has public support, only faces a partisan divide, since Republicans currently benefit from the balloter clout of less populous, rural states.
Gallup reports 61 per centum 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 per centum of Democrats and only 23 percent of Republicans.
I route would be a constitutional amendment, which would require two-thirds approval from both the Business firm and Senate and ratification by the states, or a constitutional convention called by 2-thirds of the state legislatures.
Some hope to reduce the Electoral Higher's importance without an amendment. Fifteen states and the District of Columbia, which together command 196 balloter votes, take signed on to an interstate meaty 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 every bit a referendum.) The local laws would take effect only once the meaty has plenty states to total 270 electoral votes.
Lastly, an ballot-related example could discover its mode 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.
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/article/the-electoral-college.html
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