Electoral College, 12th Amendment, and the Chad

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Electoral College, 12th Amendment, and the Chad

One of the last issues to be resolved by the Constitutional framers was how to select presidents. In the end, they compromised on having elite electors do the job. The 12th Amendment (allowing a Presidential and VP candidate from the same party run as a team) is the only change made to the original plan. Here's how it works...

Candidates must win at least 270 (majority) of the 538 potential electoral votes. Each state has a predetermined number of electoral votes based on the number of senators (2) plus the number of US Representatives from their state (at least 1.) California has the most electoral votes with 55, and Wyoming (among other small states) has the fewest with 3.

To win these electoral votes, candidates must win the popular vote in each state with at least a plurality of the vote (i.e. one more vote than your opponent.) By winning a state’s popular vote, a presidential candidate wins all of that state’s electoral votes. This is the winner takes all format which makes candidates restrict their campaigning to the largest and most competitive states (Ohio, Florida and Wisconsin in 2004.)

Florida in the year 2000 offers the best look at the Electoral College through the eyes of Federalism. On election night, it appeared as if Bush won the state by a narrow plurality of about 1,200 votes. But Florida state law dictates that all ballots in the state be recounted by the machines when elections are so close. After the ballots were recounted, Bush’s margin over Gore was only 900 votes. Sensing a chance to seize Florida’s 25 electoral votes, Gore demanded that 4 predominantly Democratic counties manually recount their questionable ballots.

The ballots in question had bad chads--the shard of paper that a voter was not able or willing to punch out inorder to cast a successful vote. Unlike many states, there was no statewide standard that established whether a dimpled chad was or was not a vote. Each of the four counties had a different “chad” standard of what was legally considered a vote.

Bush filed a lawsuit that was eventually settled by the U.S. Supreme Court. 7 justices ended up deciding that Florida needed to create one-state standard about what should or should not be considered a vote. But only the slightest majority of justices (5-4) voted that there was no longer time to recount Florida’s ballots. All of Florida’s 25 electoral votes were thereby awarded to Bush making him the 43rd President of the United States despite losing by 500,000 votes.