The Electoral College

As a result of Hurricane Sandy, the entire state of New Jersey postponed the celebration of Halloween until Monday, November 5th.  Once Halloween is safely behind us, though, we'll head to the polling booths for a truly scary event -- the election of the next President of the United States, the "leader of the free world"!   Why is it so scary?  For your consideration:  The Electoral College.

The Electoral College was created by Article 2, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution and was refined in 1804 by the 12th Amendment.  Together, they describe the following method used in the United States to select our President and Vice President:

• Each state is allowed to appoint a number of Electors that equals the number of its Senators (two per state) plus the number of its Representatives (depends upon the state's population).  As such, New Jersey has 14 Electors (2 + 12) while Wyoming only has 3 (2 + 1). 
• Each candidate running for President has his or her own group of Electors in each state.  In most cases, these Electors are chosen by the candidate’s political party, but the exact selection process and responsibilities of Electors could vary from state to state.
• For each state, the Electors representing the candidate that won the popular vote in their state meet on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December after the presidential election to cast their votes for President and Vice President.  Technically, the next President of the United States won't officially be elected until the Electoral College cast their ballots on December 17, 2012. 

That's all there is to it.  Pretty simple, huh?  Not really.

To begin with, there are no Constitutional provisions or Federal laws describing how Electors are to be appointed or whether or not they must vote according to the results of their statewide popular vote.  While most states expect Electors to vote for the candidate that wins the statewide popular vote, only about half of the states actually require it.  Also, most states have a "winner take all" philosophy, whereby all Electoral votes go to the candidate that wins their statewide popular vote.  But two states (Maine and Nebraska) allow their Electoral votes to be divided among the candidates.  Other states are considering similar options.

Also, it is easily possible for a candidate to gain a majority of Electoral votes (and thus be elected President) while losing the popular vote.  That's exactly what happened in the 2000 election when Al Gore won the popular vote by 543,895 votes but George W. Bush won the Electoral College by a count of 271-266.  Indeed, as shown in the table below, it is theoretically possible for the winner of the 2012 Presidential election to garner less than 28% of the popular vote!   

A highly unlikely scenario, I admit, but a statistical possibility.

One last Electoral College quirk. As stipulated in the Constitution, in the event of an exact tie in the Electoral College (i.e.:  each candidate receiving 269 votes), the House of Representatives elects the President while the Senate elects the Vice President.  Should this happen in 2012, the House (controlled by the Republicans) would almost certainly elect Mitt Romney as President while the Senate could very well elect Joe Biden as his Vice President!   Who says the Founding Fathers didn't have a sense of humor?