Mail-in ballots are arriving in mailboxes now and sample ballots will be delivered next week. While casting your vote in local races such as for the Board of Education and Judge of the Circuit Court is extremely important, the race that is on most voters' minds is the one for president.
Every four years we hear about how the president of the United States is chosen by the Electoral College and not by the popular vote, and every four years we are subjected to a debate over the pros and cons of selecting our federal chief executive using this method. However, the question that I am asked every presidential election season is, “How exactly does the electoral college work?”
Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution established the Electoral College. Its operation was changed by the 12th Amendment in 1804 and is also governed by federal and state statutes. The number of electors that each state receives is based on its number of senators, which is two, and its number of representatives, which varies based on population. Maryland has two senators and eight representatives, so it has 10 votes in the electoral college.
How many electors make up the electoral college? Congress is composed of 100 senators and 435 representatives. Since the 23rd Amendment was ratified in 1961, the District of Columbia has had three electors bringing the total number of electors to 538. The state with the most electors is California with 55. The states with the least number of electors, that is 3, include Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming.
Some folks good at arithmetic may notice a disparity between the number of electors from each state and the distribution of popular vote among those states, namely, that the number of representatives that each state has, and subsequently, each state’s number of electors, does not accurately reflect the major population differences between states.
Due to population growth, the popular vote grows almost every year, but the electoral college is stuck with 538 electors unless another state is added to the Union. The reason for this is the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 which capped the number of representatives at the level established after the 1910 Census — 435. Before that, as a state’s population grew it would gain more representatives, thereby increasing the total number of representatives in Congress. The act put a stop to this.
For example, the most populous state as of the 2010 census is California with approximately 37,253,956 people, 53 representatives, and 55 electors. The least populous state of Wyoming has 563,626 people, 1 representative, and 3 electors. While California has 18 times the number of electors that Wyoming has, California’s population is 66 times larger than Wyoming’s. As a result of this discrepancy, a small state such as Wyoming carries much more weight in the electoral college than it does in the popular vote.
In every state except for Maine and Nebraska, the winner of the state’s popular vote receives that state’s entire number of electoral votes. For example, Donald Trump received 34% of the vote in Maryland in 2016 but Hillary Clinton received all 10 of Maryland’s electoral votes because of this “winner-take- all” system. A presidential candidate must receive at least 270 electoral votes, or one more vote than 269 which is half of the 538 possible votes.
Who are these electors? Although it varies from state to state, in Maryland, the chairman of the Maryland Democratic Party chooses 10 Democrat electors based on nominations from county central committees and the Maryland Republican Party’s State Central Committee also appoints 10 electors.
After the presidential election takes place, the party whose candidate won all of that state’s electoral votes, except Maine and Nebraska, which proportionally allocate electoral votes, sends its electors to its state capital on the Monday after the second Wednesday in December to officially cast their electoral votes. 33 states, including Maryland and D.C. require by law for electors to vote for the candidate of the party for whom he or she pledged to vote. In other states, “faithless electors” can go rogue and vote for an alternative candidate. Finally, a joint session of Congress is held on Jan. 6 where the electoral votes are counted and a winner is officially declared. If no candidate receives a majority of electoral votes, the House of Representatives elects the president from the three candidates who received the most electoral votes. Each state delegation has one vote.
Whether you mail in or drop off your mail-in ballot on or before Nov. 3 or vote early from Oct. 26 to Nov. 2 or vote on Nov. 3, you are not actually voting for the candidate for president, but electors pledged to vote for that candidate.
Christopher Tomlinson, a member of the Carroll County Republican Central Committee, writes from Melrose. Find him on Facebook at ColumnistChrisTomlinson or email him at CCTtomlinson@gmail.com.