By now you probably know what the Electoral College is and how it works, right? Well it hurts my head every time I think about it! So lets have a brief zip around it and why it’s important right now. That cool?
Here’s 5 Things to Know…
- When you vote for a presidential candidate, you’re basically telling your state which candidate you’d like it to vote for. And they do that using electors from the winning party of your state's election — except Maine and Nebraska, who just have to be different and can award electors to more than one candidate.
- On December 14, those electors represent you and your state and send off their votes. There are 538 electoral college votes and the first candidate to get more than half with 270 wins.
- What’s interesting in this rather complex process is that there isn’t a federal or constitutional law that makes the electors vote according to the popular vote results in their state. It’s worked for 232 years because of the electors “good faith,” and “morality.”
- But what if an elector goes rogue and chooses how they’d like to vote, freely? Well, they’re called “Faithless Electors.” Some states will fine, or even replace them for doing it. This year though, the Supreme Court decided the Constitution doesn’t require the electors to be able to be free to act as they wish, which is still a bit vague.
- So could this happen now? Well it's massively rare! Throughout history, electors have largely stuck to the plan because they’re nearly always extremely loyal party members. But, if the Supreme Court were to intervene and grant more powers to, say, state legislatures to behave in a more partisan manner, then you can most likely kiss goodbye to any kind of truly fair election.
In the future, let’s hope cooler heads and moral hearts prevail or else the U.S. will no longer be able to make the claim that it’s the greatest democracy on earth but merely the most disappointing dumbocracy in the world....