The Electoral College

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The Electoral College

The number of electors each state gets is equal to its total number of Senators and Representatives in Congress. A total of 538 electors form the Electoral College. Each elector casts one vote following the general election. The candidate who gets 270 votes or more wins.

How should we select who will be President?

1. The obvious answer is to have all eligible voters go out and vote and whoever has the most votes wins! WRONG!!!! This is not how we do it in the United States….. In fact, two recent Presidents became President with LESS votes than the other candidate.
1. George W Bush had less votes than Al Gore but Bush won
2. Donald Trump had less votes than Hillary Clinton but Trump won

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• The United States uses the Electoral College System to select Presidents and decided this process during the Constitutional Convention through a compromise!!

How should we select who will be President?

1. One group wanted STATES to decide the Presidency (ex. 13 states, each state would cast one vote)
2. One group wanted PEOPLE to decide the Presidency (ex. there were 1.5 million eligible voters throughout the 13 states. Let them vote and whoever had the most votes would become the president).

Who might be against #1 and who might be against to #2?

How should we select who will be President?

1. Ultimately a compromise was reached and STATES would decide who became President BUT……each State did not have the same AMOUNT of votes!
2. The number of votes depended on POPULATION….
1. Math people need a formula here!!!!! The number of electoral votes to which each state is entitled to is set by adding the number of House of Representatives seats each state has + each states 2 Senators.

How should we select who will be President?

As a presidential candidate, you would look at the election as 50 individual elections.

The vast majority of states use a “Winner Take ALL” approach. Whoever gets the most votes in a state gets ALL the electoral votes.

As a candidate, why go to a state to campaign that you know you are going to get the most votes and why go to a state to campaign that you know you are definitely not going to get the most votes……YOU DON”T GO!!!

You go to SWING STATES… States where it is too close to call and could swing either way on ELECTION DAY!!!

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Recent Swing States & 2024 Interactive Map (270 to win)

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• Florida
• Arizona
• Georgia
• Iowa
• Michigan
• Nevada
• New Hampshire
• North Carolina
• Ohio
• Pennsylvania
• Texas
• Wisconsin
• Minnesota

Use the BLANK MAP and try to ‘win’ an election by earning the necessary 270 electoral votes in the following ways:

• Winning with the fewest states possible
• Winning with the most states possible
• Winning WITHOUT Wisconsin, Arizona, or Pennsylvania
• Winning WITHOUT Michigan, North Carolina, or Georgia
• By… not winning and earning 269 electoral votes (a tie)
• AND… when looking at the 2024 projections… where would you spend your final weeks to ensure that you win? (make sure to identify if you’d run as an (R) or (D) for the best chance to win.

Ranked Choice Voting (IRV)

8 Most Contentious Presidential Elections

Your table group will be assigned one of the 8 most contested presidential elections in US History.

• 1800
• 1824
• 1860
• 1876
• 1912
• 1948
• 2000
• 2016

Put together a summary that covers the following:

• Why the election was contested - What was the issue?
• What was the end result (what happened?)
• Do you agree with the outcome?

The Electoral College Debate

Now that we know about the issues that sometimes arise from the electoral college, do you believe that we should continue to use the Electoral College System in America?