A group of people who gather to cast their votes for presidential candidates

When we Americans cast our votes, (the popular vote) we are actually voting for electors, who will cast their votes for the presidential candidates

2 reasons our Founding Fathers wanted one:

1. to give states w/ small populations more of an equal weight in presidential elections

2. they didn’t trust the common man to be able to make an informed decision on who would make the best president

But rather, when the Constitution was written,

not many people knew a lot about gov’t, politics, or presidential elections

Many were farmers & lived in rural areas, where they were much more concerned with providing for their families than with who was running for political office

Who’s she?!

Awww

Pre- nose job

Very pre- nose job

The Founding Fathers thought that these “common people” wouldn’t necessarily make the best decisions,

so the Electoral College was born

In Congress, you have the Senate & the House of Representatives› How many senators

does each state get?› # of representatives

each state gets in the House is based on…

Example from 2000: in the Senate, CA had

2 senators & CT had 2 senators

In the House, CA had 52 reps

& CT had 6 reps

+ # of reps in the House

Formula for electoral votes in each state:› # of senators

But if the census finds that the population of one state has decreased over the last 10 years,

and the pop. of another has increased,

the # of electoral votes that state gets changes, because

electoral votes = senators (2) + reps

If there are always 435 reps in the House of Reps,

and each state has 2 senators,

how many electoral votes are there?

535plus 3 from Washington DC

so 538538/2=269 Thus, a candidate

needs at least 270 votes to win

If, in CT, 60% of the people like you & me voted for Alex Trebek,

& 40% of the people voted for Will Ferrell,

our 7 or 8 state electors don’t have to cast their votes for Alex Trebek

Technically, the electors for your state don’t have to vote for the guy who won the popular vote in your state

The Electoral College meets a few weeks after the presidential election› Since they almost

always vote the way the majority of people in their state voted, the meeting is more of a formality

We know the outcome before they meet

Usually, the candidate who wins the popular vote also wins in the Electoral College

When all of the electoral votes are counted, the president with the most votes wins

Republican: George W. Bush

Democrat: Al Gore

Many states were decided by only a handful of votes

The one state that seemed to keep flip-flopping was Florida

Morning After the Election

In the end, Gore won the national popular vote by nearly 540,000 votes

But he didn’t win the electoral vote

Enter the hanging chadEnter the hanging chad

The vote was so close in Florida that a recount was necessary

Not to mention the so-called “dimpled” chads, or “pregnant” chads

Computer recounts gave Bush a 327-vote lead for the state

(which altogether cast 6 million votes)

Because the difference was so small, Florida officials ordered another recount by hand

Florida Secretary of State Kathleen Harris set a deadline for the recount

Although election officials worked tirelessly, the Florida Supreme Court later had to extend that deadline

Eventually, the US Supreme Court ordered an end to the recount and ruled that the most recent vote total, which favored Bush, be certified the official

The day after that:

The day after that:

Bush was ruled to have won Florida by 930 votes

He was then awarded all of Florida’s electoral votes, giving him 271

Gore had 266

Almost as likely as: Well, if it is written

into the Constitution, what would it take to get rid of it?

An amendment would have to be proposed by 2/3 of the House of Reps and the Senate,

then ratified by ¾ of the states

Overview by Disney