Who are the electors chosen by?
Who selects the electors? Choosing each State’s electors is a two-part process. First, the political parties in each State choose slates of potential electors sometime before the general election. Second, during the general election, the voters in each State select their State’s electors by casting their ballots.
What do the electoral votes mean?
In nearly every state, the candidate who gets the most votes wins the “electoral votes” for that state, and gets that number of voters (or “electors”) in the “Electoral College.” For California, this means we get 55 votes (2 senators and 53 members of the House of Representatives) — the most of any state.
How many states require their electors to vote for the candidate with the largest popular vote?
Today, all but two states (Maine and Nebraska) award all their electoral votes to the single candidate with the most votes statewide (the so-called “winner-take-all” system).
What happens if no candidate gets 270 electoral votes?
What happens if no presidential candidate gets 270 electoral votes? If no candidate receives a majority of electoral votes, the Presidential election leaves the Electoral College process and moves to Congress. (Since the District of Columbia is not a State, it has no State delegation in the House and cannot vote).
How many electoral votes do you need to win the election?
A candidate needs the vote of at least 270 electors—more than half of all electors—to win the presidential election. In most cases, a projected winner is announced on election night in November after you vote. But the actual Electoral College vote takes place in mid-December when the electors meet in their states.
What happens if there is a tie in the electoral votes?
In such a situation, the House chooses one of the top three presidential electoral vote-winners as the president, while the Senate chooses one of the top two vice presidential electoral vote-winners as vice president.
Who elects the president if there is a tie in the Electoral College?
Each state may cast one vote and an absolute majority is needed to win. Similarly, the Senate decides who the next Vice President will be if there is no absolute majority after the Electoral College vote.
Which US president won the most electoral votes?
Roosevelt went on to win the greatest electoral landslide since the rise of hegemonic control between the Democratic and Republican parties in the 1850s. Roosevelt took 60.8% of the popular vote, while Landon won 36.5% and Lemke won just under 2%.
Why was the Electoral College created?
The Electoral College was created by the framers of the U.S. Constitution as an alternative to electing the president by popular vote or by Congress. Several weeks after the general election, electors from each state meet in their state capitals and cast their official vote for president and vice president.
Why did the Founding Fathers establish the Electoral College?
The Founding Fathers established the Electoral College in the Constitution, in part, as a compromise between the election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens.
What was the founding fathers original purpose for the Electoral College?
Amending the Process Originally, the Electoral College provided the Constitutional Convention with a compromise between two main proposals: the popular election of the President and the election of the President by Congress.
What is the Electoral College in simple terms?
The United States Electoral College is a name used to describe the official 538 Presidential electors who come together every four years during the presidential election to give their official votes for President and Vice President of the United States. No state can have fewer than three electors.