When voters go to the polls in a Presidential election, they actually vote for the slate of electors who have vowed to cast their ballots for that ticket in the Electoral College.
Most states require that all electoral votes go to the candidate who receives the most votes in that state. After state election officials certify the popular vote of each state, the winning slate of electors meet in the state capital and cast two ballots—one for Vice President and one for President. The founders hoped this rule would prevent the largest states from dominating presidential elections. In the modern era, faithless electors are rarer still, and have never determined the outcome of a presidential election.
House of Representatives About this object In the presidential election, James Garfield narrowly won the popular vote but swept the Electoral College in the Midwest and Northeast. Since the midth century, Congress has met in a Joint Session every four years on January 6 at p. The sitting Vice President presides over the meeting and opens the votes from each state in alphabetical order.
He passes the votes to four tellers—two from the House and two from the Senate—who announce the results. House tellers include one Representative from each party and are appointed by the Speaker. At the end of the count, the Vice President then announces the name of the next President. Since , 3 U. During the Joint Session, lawmakers may object to individual electoral votes or to state returns as a whole. An objection must be declared in writing and signed by at least one Representative and one Senator.
Another camp was dead set against letting the people elect the president by a straight popular vote. First, they thought 18th-century voters lacked the resources to be fully informed about the candidates, especially in rural outposts.
And third, a populist president appealing directly to the people could command dangerous amounts of power. Out of those drawn-out debates came a compromise based on the idea of electoral intermediaries.
But determining exactly how many electors to assign to each state was another sticking point. Here the divide was between slave-owning and non-slave-owning states. The compromise ensured that Southern states would ratify the Constitution and gave Virginia, home to more than , slaves, a quarter 12 of the total electoral votes required to win the presidency For starters, there were no political parties in The drafters of the Constitution assumed that electors would vote according to their individual discretion, not the dictates of a state or national party.
And even more important, the Constitution says nothing about how the states should allot their electoral votes. Any semblance of elector independence has been fully wiped out.
The Founders also assumed that most elections would ultimately be decided by neither the people nor the electors, but by the House of Representatives. According to the Constitution, if no single candidate wins a majority of the electoral votes, the decision goes to the House, where each state gets one vote. Between Aug. They believed that the electors would ensure that only a qualified person became president.
And they thought the Electoral College would serve as a check on a public who might be easily misled, especially by foreign governments. But the original system — in which the winner of the Electoral College would become president and the runner-up became vice president — fell apart almost immediately.
By the election of , political parties had arisen. Because electoral votes for president and vice president were not listed on separate ballots, Democratic-Republican running mates Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr tied in the Electoral College, sending the contest to the House of Representatives.
The House ultimately chose Jefferson as the third president, leaving Burr as vice president — not John Adams, who had led the opposing Federalist party ticket. The problem was resolved in when the 12th Amendment was ratified, allowing the electors to cast separate ballots for president and vice president. It has been that way ever since.
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