By Mya Blanchard-Nashua Ink Link

The Electoral College is the process through which the president is elected in the United States. It consists of 538 electors, a number is arrived at by adding the total number of representatives in the U.S. House (435), the number of U.S. senators (100), and three electors from the District of Columbia. A majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect the president. The number of state’s electors is determined by the number of House members and senators that represent it. New Hampshire has four electors. 

Before the election, political parties in each state choose slates of potential electors. This means each presidential candidate running in a state has his or her own slate of potential electors. Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution establishes that “no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.”

Why do we have the Electoral College?

Electors were created to elect a president during the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The idea arose as a compromise between those advocating a direct popular vote to choose a president and those advocating that a president be elected by members of Congress. The idea was to check the “raw will” of the majority. 

Originally, electors were to use their own independent judgment when voting for president. This quickly changed when partisanship became involved in the election process. So, instead of using their own judgment, electors are bound to the political party they are pledged to and must vote accordingly. 

How the Electoral College works

When voting in the general election, you aren’t directly voting for a presidential candidate. Instead, your vote helps decide who your state’s electors will be. In other words, by selecting your preferred presidential candidate, you are voting to select their electors in your state. 

After the election, a “certificate of ascertainment” is prepared. It lists all the names of the potential electors on the slates for each candidate, how many votes each received, and confirms the names of the appointed electors. 

The appointed electors record their vote on “certificates of vote” during their meeting, which is held on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. The certificates are then sent to Congress and are counted at the House Chamber in a joint session of the House and Senate.

There is no federal law that requires electors to vote according to the results of the popular vote, although some states do require this. Electors who don’t vote for the candidate they pledged to vote for are called “faithless electors,” and can be subject to fines or be disqualified and replaced in some states. New Hampshire does not have laws barring faithless electors. 

If no candidate wins at least 270 electoral votes, the House of Representatives elects the president by a majority vote. 

Pros and cons 

The electoral system means that a candidate can win the popular vote — more people voted for that candidate — but not enough electoral votes to win the election, and vice versa. 

Some argue that the electoral system gives an unfair advantage to states with a large number of electors. For example, it is possible for a candidate to not get a single vote in 39 states or Washington, D.C., and still win the election if they win the popular vote in 11 of the 12 states with the largest number of electors: California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia. 

Others argue that the Electoral College protects states with smaller populations, and fewer electors, such as New Hampshire. They say candidates can’t ignore these states, because in a close election, every electoral vote counts. 

According to the National Archives, there have been more proposals for constitutional amendments to change the Electoral College than any other subject, with more than 700 introduced over the past 200 years to reform or eliminate it altogether.

These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative and the Know Your Vote youth voter guide. The Know Your Vote youth voter guide project was designed, reported and produced by student and young professional journalists from The Clock, Concord Monitor, The Equinox, Granite State News Collaborative, Keene State College, Laconia Daily Sun, Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, Nashua Ink Link, and The Presidency and the Press program at Franklin Pierce University. You can see the full guide at www.collaborativenh.org/know-your-vote.