How many votes will it take to elect the President of the United States in the November 6 election this year? Millions? 50% plus 1 of the votes cast?
The answer is 270. And those votes won't be cast until December.
When we vote in November we will actually be voting for each state's Electors. Those Electors will then vote in December by casting their ballots for a presidential candidate.
There is no provision in the US Constitution for a popular vote for President and Vice President. Instead, Article II Section 1 of the Constitution describes in about 400 words how the Electors determine who holds these offices. It also directs the Legislatures of the States to establish the manner in which the Electors are to be appointed to their positions and to carry out their duties. Consequently, the Electors operate under a variety of State laws.
(The Constitution does not make use of the term "Electoral College" and refers only to "Electors." This use of the word "elector" seems to originate with the Holy Roman Empire. The National Archives and Records Administration has facts and history about the Electoral College; you can see it by clicking here.)
This is an antiquated way of electing our President and Vice President. At its best, it is a cumbersome way of achieving a democratic election. At its worst, it elects the losing candidate, as has been the case in four presidential elections. Most recently this occurred in the year 2000 election; it also happened in 1888, 1876 and 1824.
Keep in mind that the election of 2000 made news around the world; it diluted the respect that others have for the American democratic process.
There are two possible remedies that would be appealing.
The best course of action would be to amend the Constitution so as to strike out any mention of the Electors by replacing such text with a description of electing the President and Vice President by a national popular vote.
But amending the US Constitution is a very difficult and time-consuming process. It requires super-majorities of the Congress and the various state Legislatures to adopt a Constitutional amendment. Don't hold your breath waiting for this to happen.
The second remedy is more promising. It's called the National Popular Vote. This is a law for State adoption that requires each State's Electors to vote for the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates who have received the most popular votes nation-wide, irrespective of each State's own popular vote results.
National Popular Vote has already been enacted in eight States and the District of Columbia, accounting for 132 electoral votes. That represents almost half of the 270 votes needed to elect the President. The states that have this law are Washington, Vermont, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, Illinois, Hawaii and California. That's a good mixture of large, medium and small states; the political support has been bi-partisan in that it has been composed of Democrats, Republicans and the occasional Independent.
As for the remaining forty-two states, progress has been made in many of their Legislatures. The web site for National Popular Vote provides a lot of additional information. If you browse over there, you will see that the list of States which are in the process of adopting this law includes Arkansas, Delaware, Maine, Nevada, New York and others.
More States must adopt this law before it can be effective. The law includes language stating that it will not become effective until it is adopted by enough States to provide at least 270 Electors. That means that States with a total of 138 Electors still need to adopt this law. Here's a list that would bring us to that number: Arkansas (6), Colorado (9), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), Iowa (6), Kentucky (8), Maine (4), Michigan (16), Minnesota (10), Montana (3), Nevada (6), New Mexico (5), New York (29), North Carolina (15), Oregon (7), and Rhode Island (4). If you want to have some fun with these numbers, check out the Electoral College Calculator. I used it for this article. According to National Popular Vote, each of the States in this list has already made some legislative progress in passing this law.
The National Popular Vote has been around for a few years now, and it has been well-examined. So far, no flaw has turned up. Until and if that happens, this seems to be the best way of ensuring that the American President is elected by popular vote. It doesn't do away with the Electoral College, but the National Popular Vote law will effectively neutralize an elite organization that is an anachronism. And, it would have the added benefit of enhancing the "brand reputation" of American democracy in the rest of the world by showing that we would be electing the candidate who receives the most votes from a total electorate of 150 million or so, instead of an electorate of just a few hundred.
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