How the American electoral college works

US ELECTIONS

How the American electoral college works

In 2016, Donald Trump got thousands of votes fewer than Hillary Clinton, but he still became president of America by a wide margin. South Africans struggle to understand this. JAN-JAN JOUBERT explains this peculiar process.

ANGELA TUCK
ANGELA TUCK

THE most important thing to understand about the American electoral system is that the USA is a federation of 50 different states where each state decides for itself who it wants as president. The second most important thing to remember is that literally thousands of elections, each separate in a delineated geographic area, are happening simultaneously, where everything from school boards to sheriffs are being elected.

For the purpose of the 2024 election on Tuesday, we'll concentrate on four sets of elections, the presidential election, Senate election, election of the House of Representatives and gubernatorial elections.

The presidential election this year is between Kamala Harris of the Democrats and Donald Trump of the Republicans. There are other candidates, but they are set to get almost no votes. Currently, the president is a Democrat. The strange thing about this democracy, the USA, is that the candidate who gets the most votes does not necessarily become the president.


Lees hierdie artikel in Afrikaans


A very old-fashioned custom

The reason is the federal nature of American democracy. Each state votes separately. But at the same time, also for the presidential candidate. This culminates in a very old-fashioned custom, the meeting of the electoral college in January, when 538 Americans gather in their state capitals and officially elect the president.

How this electoral college that elects the president is put together is quite interesting. The US Congress consists of two houses, a lower house – the House of Representatives with 435 members each representing a geographical area – and a Senate of 100 members, two for each of the 50 states. Each state gets the number of members in the electoral college that they have in Congress. The electoral college therefore has 435 members + 100 members (that makes 535 members) and (since 1961) also three members for Washington DC (which does not fall in any state). So that's 435 + 100 + 3 = 538 members of the electoral college.

The state with the fewest people (Wyoming) and the state with the most people (California) each have only two senators, but the 435 members of the House of Representatives are allocated roughly proportionally to the 50 states. So California currently has 52 members in the House of Representatives, but several of the small states such as Wyoming, Alaska and Vermont each have only one member in the House of Representatives. This means that California has 52 +2 = 54 members of Congress, and small states such as Alaska, Wyoming or Vermont only have 2 + 1 = 3 members of Congress. The states with more people (for example California with 54, Texas with 40, Florida with 30 or New York with 28) have more members in the electoral college than the states with fewer people.

Not necessarily democratic

It all sounds very democratic, but is not necessarily so, because remember, each state's delegates in the electoral college can only vote as a unit for one presidential candidate. The presidential candidate who wins in Texas, for example, wins all 40 of Texas' electoral college votes (100% of Texas' total) even though he or she only wins 51% of Texas' votes. It may sound complicated, but is not. One only has to see the presidential election as 51 different elections (the 50 states and Washington DC) that take place at the same time and whose results are then combined.

How come then (as in 2016, when more Americans voted for Hillary Clinton than for Donald Trump, but Trump won) that the candidate for whom the most people vote does not win? In 2016, Clinton won massive majorities of millions and millions of votes in big states like California and New York, but Trump's small wins in bigger states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin meant he had more members in the electoral college, because the winner in each state gets all the delegates from that state's votes in the electoral college. So a series of small wins may be better than a few big ones.

So now we are almost done explaining the electoral college of 538, with the winner having to get a majority (270 delegates) to win. Just to make things somewhat more difficult (because these are the Americans) there are two states that do not necessarily allocate all their delegates to a single presidential candidate. Those two states are Nebraska, with five delegates, and Maine, with four.

Now remember that the number of delegates is determined by the number of members of Congress, namely the number of members of the House of Representatives + the members of the Senate = members of the electoral college. For Nebraska, that sum is 3 + 2 = 5, and for Maine it is 2 + 2 = 4. Where Nebraska and Maine differ from the rest of the country is that they give one vote to the winner of each of the three councils of allocated representative voting districts (the three in Nebraska and the two in Maine), and the remaining two in each state to whoever gets the most votes in the presidential election.

In practice, the Democrats usually win Maine overall, but the Republicans regularly win Maine's rural second voting district, so that the Democrats usually get three of Maine's delegates and the Republicans one. In Nebraska, the Republicans usually win the state's presidential election, but the Democrats win the second voting district (around the city of Omaha, home to Warren Buffett and several IT companies). So the Republicans usually win four of Nebraska's delegates and the Democrats one.

Much simpler rules

The rules for the elections in Senate, the House of Representatives and the governorships are simpler. Each state has one governor, and the person who gets the most votes wins the election. Governors have a lot of power to determine legislation and policy in their states, so it's a prestigious position. Eleven of the 50 states are electing governors this year.

The House of Representatives' 435 members are elected every two years, so all 435 seats are up for grabs on Tuesday. The party that wins the House of Representatives controls the composition of the country's budget, in addition to other powers. Currently, the Republicans have 220 members and the Democrats 212, with three vacancies. The balance of power is therefore on a knife edge.

One third of the Senate's members are eligible for a six-year term on Tuesday. There are currently 49 Democrats, 47 Republicans and 4 independents in the Senate. The Republicans expect to win the Senate seats in the states of West Virginia and Montana, which will leave them with 49. If things go well for them and they can win more, they will win the Senate. If they do not succeed, the Democrats remain in control of the Senate, which is a very powerful position for the adoption of legislation.

Because the USA consists of so many different time zones, the polling stations close at different times and if you follow the results live, it lasts all night for us here in South Africa. It's pretty exciting, so many of us are going to stay up all night for it.

VWB


BE PART OF THE CONVERSATION: Go to the bottom of this page to share your opinion. We look forward to hearing from you.


Speech Bubbles

To comment on this article, register (it's fast and free) or log in.

First read Vrye Weekblad's Comment Policy before commenting.