How Works Electoral College Free Essays

Write an essay that explains how the Electoral College works. How does the Electoral College shape the strategy of candidates? Why is it harder to win presidential elections post 1968? Every four years, on the Tuesday following the first Monday of November, millions of U. S. We will write a custom essay sample on How Works Electoral College or any similar topic only for you Order Now citizens go to local voting booths to elect, among other officials, the next president and vice president of their country. Their votes will be recorded and counted, and winners will be declared. But the results of the popular vote are not guaranteed to stand because the Electoral College has not cast its vote. thinking of the 2000 U. S. presidential election — Gore won the popular vote (more Americans voted for him), but Bush actually won the presidency, because he was awarded the majority of the votes in the Electoral College. The Electoral College consists of the popularly elected representatives (electors) who formally elect the President and Vice President of the United States. Since 1964, there have been 538 electors in each presidential election. 1] Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the Constitution specifies how many electors each state is entitled to have and that each state’s legislature decides how its electors are to be chosen. U. S. territories are not represented in the Electoral College. The Electoral College is an example of an indirect election. The election for President and Vice President is not a direct election by United States citizens. Ci tizens vote for electors, representing a state, who are the authorized constitutional participants in a presidential election. The Twelfth Amendment provides for each elector to cast one vote for President and one vote for Vice President. The final electors for each state are voted on by the state’s residents on voting day Today, a candidate must receive 270 of the 538 votes to win the election. In cases where no candidate wins a majority of electoral votes, the decision is thrown to the House of Representatives by virtue of the 12th Amendment. The House then selects the president by majority vote with each state delegation receiving one vote to cast for the three candidates who received the most electoral votes. Electoral College is a block, or weighed, voting system that is designed to give more power to the states with more votes, but allows for small states to swing an election, as happened in 1876. Under this system, each state is assigned a specific number of votes that is proportional to its population, so that each state’s power is representative of its population. So, while winning the popular vote may not ensure a candidate’s victory, a candidate must gain popular support of a particular state to win the votes in that state. The goal of any candidate is to put together the right combination of states that will give him or her 270 electoral votes. In 2000, as the election approached, some observers thought that Bush, interestingly also the son of a former president, could win the popular vote, but that his opponent, Gore, could win the Electoral College vote because Gore was leading in certain big states, such as California, New York and Pennsylvania. In the end, Gore secured the popular vote, but Bush won by securing the majority of votes in the Electoral College. The United States presidential election of 1968 was the 46th quadrennial United States presidential election. It was a wrenching national experience, conducted against a backdrop that included the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. and subsequent race riots across the nation, the assassination of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, widespread demonstrations against the Vietnam War across American university and college campuses, and violent confrontations between police and anti-war protesters at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. On November 5, 1968, the Republican nominee, former Vice President Richard Nixon won the election over the Democratic nominee, Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Nixon ran on a campaign that promised to restore â€Å"law and order†. Some consider the election of 1968 a realigning election that permanently disrupted the New Deal Coalition that had dominated presidential politics for 36 years. It was also the last election in which two opposing candidates were vice-presidents How to cite How Works Electoral College, Papers