Since the Democratic Convention in late July, Hillary Clinton has been favored in public opinion polls showing her to be holding a lead over Donald Trump. With Election Day getting closer, Clinton’s once-comfortable lead has been shrinking.
Both candidates are campaigning hard, trying to gain last-minute support among voters who have waited to make up their minds.
Polls show increased support for Trump – based, perhaps, on the FBI’s revelation that it is reviewing hundreds of thousands of newly discovered e-mails connected to Clinton, some of which date to her tenure as Secretary of State.
Can this latest development earn Trump enough new voter support to close the gap and win the election? Or, will Clinton maintain her shrinking lead in the polls and come out on top on Election Day?
Shifts in polls indicate at least the possibility that Donald Trump could get more popular votes than Hillary Clinton on Election Day. Would this mean that Trump will be the next President? Perhaps. But, perhaps not.
The 2016 outcome of popular voting will be known after the polls close on Nov. 8, but the formal outcome – and the winner – may not be decided until six weeks later. At that time, on Dec. 19, members of the Electoral College will cast votes to confirm the election results and announce the winner – meaning that the candidate with the highest popular vote count may, or may not, become the next President.
Usually, the candidate with the most popular votes wins. On a few occasions in American history, Electoral College balloting has gone in favor of another candidate. Most recently, in 2000, Al Gore got a half-million more votes than George W. Bush, but lost the election in the Electoral vote count.
That was a controversial outcome – ultimately decided by the US Supreme Court – and if it were to happen again this year, controversy would be sure to follow.
The process has its roots in the late 18th century, when authors of the US Constitution put in place a provision to ensure that election outcomes would safeguard the will of all citizens of the new United States. This provision created Electors, persons making up what we refer to today as the Electoral College – a process for electing leaders, not a place on any map.
The Electoral College function is an interesting footnote in the history of the development of American political life. In my next Views & News column I’ll talk about that history and its relevance to civic life in America today. For now, I’ll talk about how it works – and what we can expect in the days ahead.
In the late 1780s the authors of the Constitution feared that angry voters might band together to unduly influence the election of national leaders. Such an election, it was felt, might erase the achievements of the American Revolution by installing a person not faithful to the precepts of democracy in the Declaration of Independence, and not dedicated to the principles of representative government. The provision that was drafted created Electors as a compromise between those who wanted direct election of a president and vice president by the people, and those who wanted the US Senate to appoint the nation’s leaders.
In its modern form the Electoral College refers to 538 men and women who are chosen by political parties in each of the 50 states. They never meet as a national group, and their only official duty is to cast a single vote in post-election meetings in their home states.
The number of Electors – 538 – is based on congressional representation of the entire US population. By law, in the Senate there are two Senators from every state and, therefore, two Electors. On the House side the number of Electors from each state is equal to the number of its members in the House of Representatives. Because some states have larger populations and more congressional districts than smaller states, larger states have more members of the House – and, therefore, more Electors.
For example, California is a big state with more than 39-million residents. Alaska has much more land – it’s the largest US state on the map – but a total population of less than 745-thousand. California, therefore, has 53 congressional districts, while Alaska has only enough residents to be allotted one congressional district, with a single member of the House. In this example, adding the number of Senate and House seats, California has 55 Electors, and Alaska has three.
The 50 states together have 435 congressional districts, and 100 Senate seats; by constitutional amendment, three Electors represent the District of Columbia, adding up to 538.
How do Electors do their job – and what can we expect when they vote? As noted, each political party picks Electors, usually around the time of political conventions – and usually from the ranks of public figures and politicians with long-time party credentials and affiliations.
In any particular state this means that, by now, Electors chosen by the Democratic and Republican parties know their possible role and are standing by, waiting for Election Day. On Nov. 8, voters will go to the polls, ballots will be counted, state-by-state results will be declared final, the popular vote totals will be announced, and the nation will find out which candidate got the most votes in every state.
On the basis of those results it will be decided which party’s Electors in every state will cast ballots on Dec. 19, and which will not. If Clinton or Trump carry the popular vote in a state, the winning party’s Electors will be called to cast their ballots; the losing party’s Electors will stay home. It’s at this point that the constitutional guidelines, and the mathematical calculations of the Electoral College process, become critically important.
In most of America’s presidential elections, the candidate with the most popular votes has won. But history has shown that it’s also possible to win popular votes in small and medium-size states and the highest number of popular votes cast across the nation, but lose the election to an opponent with high electoral votes cast from larger states and just enough electoral votes from a handful of others.
The safeguard put in place by the authors of the Constitution – to protect the principles and practices of democracy against unwise decisions by an angry segment of American voters – has seldom been used, and has often been criticized as out of date, and unwise.
Nonetheless, it remains in place more than two centuries later, and sets up a hurdle that must be cleared by candidates for the presidency. The one who wins the popular vote on Nov. 8 must also win the Electoral College vote on Dec. 19. Otherwise, the loser of the popular vote may win the election, be inaugurated on Jan. 20, and begin a four-year term as President of the United States.
