close
close

first Drop

Com TW NOw News 2024

    • What is the Electoral College and how will it impact US elections?
    news

    What is the Electoral College and how will it impact US elections?

    Vaseline Posted on

    The Electoral College, the process by which the American people actually elect a president, is generally considered complex and confusing.

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

    To understand where the Electoral College came from, one must first realize that federalism is the fundamental foundation of American government.

    Therefore, the House of Representatives, the House of Representatives, represents the masses of the American people, and the House of Representatives, the Senate, represents the states.

    In 1787, the Constitutional Convention debated the question of electing a president for the entire three and a half months that the Convention lasted; the smaller states refused to join a national government unless their states were equally represented.

    A voter votes during the primary and abortion referendum at a polling place in Wyandotte County in Kansas City, Kansas, U.S., August 2, 2022. (credit: ERIC COX/REUTERS)

    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 presidential elections with respect to the smaller ones.

    The Founding Fathers were happy with this arrangement. Although this reduced the importance of the popular vote, the smaller states gained significant increases in their votes through the Electoral College.

    How is the president elected?

    Each state has the same representation in the Electoral College as it does in Congress.

    California, for example, has 54 votes in the Electoral College – 52 in terms of 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 (like all states).

    Stay up to date with the latest news!

    Subscribe to the Jerusalem Post newsletter

    A candidate needs a majority in the Electoral College – 270 votes – to become the next president. There have been five times in US history when the winner of the popular vote did not become president because the other candidate received the required number of votes in the Electoral College.

    This last happened in 2016, when Hillary Clinton received almost 2.9 million more votes than Donald Trump.

    However, many of these votes came from large states like California, which had already given all of the Electoral College votes to Clinton.

    Trump narrowly won the popular vote in states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, clinching those states’ electoral votes and thus the presidency. These same ‘swing states’ are again involved in a tense battle in the current elections.

    Swing states are states in which both candidates have an almost equal number of supporters. In almost all states, the Electoral College is a “winner takes all”: the candidate with the most votes receives all the votes of that state in the Electoral College.

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

    In the current 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 decisive vote. Although it was previously strongly identified with the Democratic Party, it can no longer be taken for granted.

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

    Likewise, the Arab population, especially in Michigan, could help tip the results there.

    In the eyes of its admirers, the Electoral College in 1787 thus represented a brilliant plan to successfully combine 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, tried to pass an amendment to overhaul the Electoral College system and allow the presidential winner to be chosen by popular vote, but he failed. required majority in Congress.

    Clearly, the smaller states were (and still are) eager to maintain their advantage in the Electoral College program.

    It remains to be seen in next week’s elections whether the Electoral College outcome will again differ from the popular vote.

    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.



    Vaseline
    View all posts

    You Might Also Like