Understanding the Electoral College and its impact on US elections - opinion

The Electoral College, the process by which the American people truly select a president, is generally regarded as complex and confusing. 

Why doesn’t the candidate who wins the most votes automatically become the next US president? 

In order to understand where the Electoral College comes from, one must first appreciate that federalism is the fundamental basis of the US 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 issue of selecting a president for the entire 3 ½ months that the Convention lasted; the smaller states refused to join a national government unless their states were represented equally. 

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 relation to the smaller ones.

The Founding Fathers were pleased with this arrangement. Although it reduced the importance of the popular vote, the smaller states gained a significant increase in their vote via the Electoral College. 

How is the president elected?

In the Electoral College, each state has the representation that it has in Congress. 

For example, California has 54 votes in the Electoral College – 52 by population (the same as its 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 they have one representative plus two because they have two senators (as all states do). 

A candidate needs a majority in the Electoral College – 270 votes – to be the next president. There have, in fact, been five times throughout US history that the winner of the popular vote did not become president due to the other candidate receiving the required number of votes in the Electoral College.

This occurred most recently in 2016, when Hillary Clinton received close to 2.9 million more votes than Donald Trump. 

Many of these votes, though, were from large states such as California, which already gave all of its Electoral College votes to Clinton. 

Trump narrowly won the popular vote in states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, gaining the electoral votes from those states and thus the presidency. These same “swing states” are once again engaged in a close contest in the current election.

Swing states are states in which both candidates have close-to-equal numbers of supporters. In almost all states, the Electoral College is a “winner takes all”: the candidate with the most number of votes gets all of that state’s votes in the Electoral College. 

Therefore, the candidates usually concentrate on these swing states because the fluctuation of a small number of voters might move that state into the candidate’s column and help win the election.

In the present election, there are seven states in the US that are considered swing states: 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 previously identified very much with the Democratic Party, now it cannot be taken for granted. 

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

Similarly, the Arab population, particularly large in Michigan, could help swing the results there. 

Thus, in the eyes of its admirers in 1787, the Electoral College represented a brilliant scheme for successfully blending national and state elements in the selection of the nation’s chief magistrate.

In 1979, former senator Birch Bayh, with the support of then-president Jimmy Carter, attempted to secure an amendment to revise the Electoral College system and have the presidential winner chosen by popular vote but could not secure the required Congressional majority.

Obviously, the smaller states were (and still are) intent on preserving their advantage in the Electoral College scheme. 

It remains to be seen at next week’s election if the Electoral College outcome will differ from the popular vote yet again. 

The writer is the James G. McDonald professor of American history, emeritus, and former chairman of the Department of American Studies at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is 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 the assistance of Ellen Goldberg.