Let's say a candidate in Texas receives 50.1% of the direct vote, that candidate will receive all 40 electoral votes held in that state. Even if the margin of victory in a state is large, the winning candidate will still get that many electoral votes.
Can anyone be defeated even with the majority of votes nationwide?
Yes, that is possible. A candidate may receive few votes nationwide, but win several tough contests and become president.
Donald Trump defeated Mrs. Clinton in 2016 despite getting nearly 300,000 fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. George W. Bush defeated Al Gore in 2000, although his margin of victory in the general vote was more than five hundred thousand.
Before those two, only three other people have been elected president of the United States without winning the popular vote. But those are nineteenth century events.
Because each state has a different number of votes, candidates schedule their campaigns in such a way that they favor the states with the most votes.
Why is it called 'Electoral College'?
The term 'college' here means the persons entitled to vote in a State.
The 'Electoral College' is a panel of officials called 'Electors'. They are, in a word, the electorate. It is formed every four years, and elects the President and Vice President of the United States.
Each state's number of electors is determined by the proportion of representation in Congress: which is determined by the sum of the number of senators in the state (two in each state) and the number of representatives in the House of Representatives (which is proportional to population).
According to Electoral College system, states with larger population also have larger electoral votes.
This practice is only used for presidential elections. All other US elections are decided by direct popular vote.
Can anyone be defeated even with the majority of votes nationwide?
Yes, that is possible. A candidate may receive few votes nationwide, but win several tough contests and become president.
Donald Trump defeated Mrs. Clinton in 2016 despite getting nearly 300,000 fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. George W. Bush defeated Al Gore in 2000, although his margin of victory in the general vote was more than five hundred thousand.
Before those two, only three other people have been elected president of the United States without winning the popular vote. But those are nineteenth century events.
Because each state has a different number of votes, candidates schedule their campaigns in such a way that they favor the states with the most votes.
Why is it called 'Electoral College'?
The term 'college' here means the persons entitled to vote in a State.
The 'Electoral College' is a panel of officials called 'Electors'. They are, in a word, the electorate. It is formed every four years, and elects the President and Vice President of the United States.
Each state's number of electors is determined by the proportion of representation in Congress: which is determined by the sum of the number of senators in the state (two in each state) and the number of representatives in the House of Representatives (which is proportional to population).
According to Electoral College system, states with larger population also have larger electoral votes.
This practice is only used for presidential elections. All other US elections are decided by direct popular vote.
The candidate who will win the state, the electors are obliged to vote for him?
In some states, electors are legally free to vote for a candidate of their choice, regardless of who the general electorate prefers.
But in fact it is seen that the candidate who got the majority of votes is the one the electors voted for.
If an elector votes against the person chosen as president from the state, he is called 'faithless'.
Earlier in the 2016 elections, seven Electoral College votes were cast this way, but it had no impact on the election results.
In some states 'faithless' voters may be fined or prosecuted.
What happens if the electoral vote is 'tied'?
If no one gets a clear majority in any case, the lower house of the US legislature, the House of Representatives, elects the president.
This happened only once in 1824. The Electoral College votes were split between four candidates, with no one getting a majority.
However, with the dominance of both the Republican and Democratic parties, such an event is unlikely.
Why was the Electoral College system chosen?
When the US Constitution was being written in 1787, the lack of communication across the vast country made it virtually impossible to elect a president by popular vote at the national level.
The framers of the Constitution then invented the Electoral College system.
When the framers of the Constitution drafted the Constitution in 1787, they rejected both the concept of presidential election by Congress and direct popular vote.
Their argument was that if the president was elected by popular vote, people would vote for their local candidate and thus the big states would dominate.
Smaller states support this Electoral College system because they are considered more important in electing the president.
Southern states favored this method because of the large number of slaves in these states at the time. Although slaves did not have the right to vote, they were counted in the census.
Also, the framers of the Constitution did not want the president of the country to be elected by the legislators sitting in the capital, Washington DC.
Pros and Cons of Electoral College System
The advantages of this method are:
• Smaller states matter to candidates.
• Candidates don't need to travel all over the country, just focus on important states
• Recalculation is easier, as officials can easily identify a state's problem.
• A candidate who wins the popular vote can also lose the election
• A section of voters feel that their individual vote has no value
• Too much power in the hands of so-called 'swing states'
What are the 'swing states'?
Most states consistently vote for the same party in every election.
In American elections, these states known as Republican strongholds are called 'Red States' or 'Red States' and states dominated by Democrats are called 'Blue States' or 'Blue States'.
As a result, candidates do not have to worry or pay much attention to these states.
But there are only a handful of states where the vote, due to the candidates, can go either way.
As a result, presidential candidates look to certain 'swing states' where it is not clear which party will vote.
These are the battlegrounds of American elections. Many people call these 'Purple States'.
These states become very important for candidates. These are called battleground states or electoral battlegrounds.
And the votes of these states ultimately become the key to victory or defeat. The main competition is in these states.
Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin thus became 'battle-ground states' in 2016.
Every election has seen that candidates spend more time and money campaigning in states with higher voter turnouts.
Who are the fake voters?
US voters were introduced to the term 'fake voters' for the first time in 2020. That year, pro-Trump Republicans created their own 'electors' in seven states to swing the election.
In some cases they forged documents that looked like government documents, signed them and appeared in state capitals on December 14. On that day, the voters of the entire country officially voted.
A case has been filed against some of those who participated in this fraud. The investigation is still ongoing.
Some notable history of elections
2016: Republican candidate Donald Trump was elected president with 306 electoral votes, although he received nearly 3 million fewer votes than Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
2000: Republican candidate George W. Bush was elected president with 271 electoral votes, although Democrat Al Gore received 540,000 more votes.
1888: Republican candidate Benjamin Harrison was elected president with 233 electoral votes, while Democrat Grover Cleveland received 1456 more votes.
1876: Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was elected president with 185 electoral votes, but Democrat Samuel J. Tilden received 264,000 more votes.
1824: The Electoral College is split between four candidates, and the House elects John Quincy Adams as president, although Andrew Jackson receives more of the popular electoral vote.
Comments
Post a Comment