LIMA — Most people were taught about the Electoral College in their high school government class and even into college classes. But, when elections such as this last election are close, and a president is elected by the Electoral College and not the popular vote, people want to know how that happened.
Enter Dr. Robert Alexander. He is a professor of political science and department chair for the department of history, politics and justice at Ohio Northern University in Ada, as well as author of “Presidential Electors And The Electoral College: An Examination of Lobbying, Wavering Electors, and Campaigns For Faithless Votes.”
Alexander will speak at 2 p.m. Jan. 29, at the Allen County Museum, 620 W. Market St., Lima on “The Electoral College.”
Why don’t we know more about the Electoral College?
“Even in graduate school, we spend very little time talking about the Electoral College. I liken it to a vestigial organ, it really doesn’t seem to have much of a purpose but when your appendix bursts, people suddenly say, ‘What’s going on here?’ It’s a little bit like that. It doesn’t seem to have much of a function, but of course it does, and certainly in a presidential election it determines everything about strategy. That was very clear with Trump’s path to victory,” Alexander said.
According to the National Archives and Records Administration, the Electoral College was established by the founding fathers in the Constitution as a compromise between election of the president by a vote in Congress and election of the president by a popular vote of qualified citizens. The Electoral College consists of 538 electors. A majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect the president. Voters help choose their state’s electors when they vote for president because when they vote for their candidate, they are actually voting for their candidate’s electors.
Who selects the electors?
Each candidate running for president in Ohio has their own group of electors. These electors are usually chosen by the candidate’s political party, but state laws vary on how the electors are selected.
“When you and I go and vote in Ohio for instance, we are voting for those electors, not the representatives themselves, as they are selected for those positions, by the political parties. Ohio has a party committee to elect the electors. They are different across the states. That’s why you might have somebody that’s really a loyal Democrat not vote for Hillary Clinton because you could be a good Democrat and not like Clinton, you could be a Bernie Sanders person or you could be a Republican but not a Trump Republican,” Alexander said.
Most states have a “winner-take-all” system that awards all electors to the winning presidential candidate.
While this election is one that we know was chosen based on the Electoral College versus the popular vote, there have been other presidential elections where the Electoral College decided the president versus popular vote.
“Most historians would say that this is the fifth time that we have seen a split in the popular and Electoral College, however it’s most likely the sixth time we’ve seen it. It also happened in 1960, but that’s often overlooked because of the way that electors in the south voted. It’s the fifth or sixth time that it has happened over the course of American history, which is a good number given how many presidential elections we’ve had. It’s not uncommon,” Alexander said.
“A lot of the research would show that close to between a third to half of the presidential elections in total have come down to really handfuls of votes in certain states where we could have had really a contingent election, where it goes to the House of Representatives, where we could have had a different outcome. A lot of elections, state by state, it is actually much closer than most people think. The outcome we saw in this election it had much more potential that people perceive,” Alexander said.
The Allen County Historical Society had Dr. Alexander speak at one of their meetings last year.
“He was here last January, so it’s been exactly one year. At that time his talk was on the presidential campaign. There was very good audience participation. We had a lot of requests from people at the time to have a follow up program by him on the Electoral College,” said Pat Smith, director of the Allen County Museum. “There were a lot of questions that had come up at that last presentation about the Electoral College.”
Alexander’s talk on Jan. 29 will give people a much more in-depth description of the Electoral College and how it works.
“I will probably spend a little bit of time talking about arguments for and against the Electoral College. I will likely lay out a little bit of the rationale, arguments for and against it, and then spend the bulk of my time discussing electors, the actual people that are selected to choose president and vice president. That’s my area of research on the electoral college and it really had a big effect in this year’s presidential election,” Alexander said.
Smith added, “There has been this disconnect about what the popular vote has been versus what the electoral vote was. We went along for quite a long time without that scenario happening, so I think that when it’s ever come up, I’m sure there’s been a lot of time spent discussing it and whether or not the system should continue or should it be somehow changed to reflect the popular vote. I suspect that that would open a big can of worms if anybody ever made an attempt to get that changed.
Alexander said people’s perspectives on the Electoral College change depending on if their candidate benefitted.
“One of the things I’ve seen as it speaks to the Electoral College and this campaign is it depends on where you stand. If you feel like you benefited, then the Electoral College is great. If you feel like you were wronged in this election then the Electoral College is a problem. That actually has bared itself out much more in this election than in past elections. That’s been an intriguing piece on any potential movement to change the institution,” Alexander said.
.neFileBlock {
margin-bottom: 20px;
}
.neFileBlock p {
margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
}
.neFileBlock .neFile {
border-bottom: 1px dotted #aaa;
padding-bottom: 5px;
padding-top: 10px;
}
.neFileBlock .neCaption {
font-size: 85%;
}
