How the Electoral College Works and Why We Have One
The Electoral College is an integral, if not unusual, part of American democracy. Few other countries have it, and even when they do, the system is not quite the same. How does an electoral college work and why do we have one at all? Our last video explains.
Simply put, the Electoral College was a mechanism devised by the Founding Fathers to create a layer of bureaucracy between the people and the president. Each state gets the number of College “electors” equal to the number of Senators and Representatives combined, and together with the three that the District of Columbia gets, this adds up to the 538 we know so well. To secure the presidency, a candidate must receive 270 electoral votes.
When you vote for the president, you are not actually voting directly for the candidate. You actually vote for the elector who represents your state to stand up and vote for the candidate you support. The video above explains in more detail, but such a representative democracy was designed to both simplify the electoral process and avoid the risks that the Founding Fathers saw in a direct general election. Although the Electoral College is set out in the Constitution, there is no federal law that states that a voter must vote according to the wishes of his constituency or the vote of his state’s population, and the ranks of some voters have been violated throughout history – but never to such an extent that elections are decided.
Update : The video notes that in winner-take-all states, voters are nominated based on majority districts – this is not the case; electors in winner-take-all states are based on popular vote.
To learn more about the process, click Play in the video above. If the electoral process isn’t confusing enough for you, watch the video below, which explains how primaries and factions work – it’s an even more complex and bureaucratic process.