When the Founding Fathers argued over how the newly formed United States would elect a president, they reached a compromise and forged a unique system that became known as the Electoral College.
It requires a candidate to reach 270 of a total of 538 electoral votes. The way that math plays out has changed election after election, candidate after candidate.
For the 2024 race, polls show that most of the 538 votes are already secured for Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, but 93 are still up for grabs in seven battleground states.
Seven states are considered swing states in the 2024 presidential race with 93 electoral votes at stake, but the path to the White House will depend on who wins Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina.
Boxes containing Electoral College votes from the 2020 election are opened during a joint session of the House and Senate on January 6, 2021.
The process behind the Electoral College is outlined in Article Two of the United States Constitution.
Each state gets as many electors as there are members of Congress: those in the House and the Senate. There are currently 538 electors in total, including three from Washington DC, which is represented despite not being a state.
Voters go to the polls on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November, that is, November 5 in this year’s elections.
After the results, the people chosen as electors gather in state capitals on the first Tuesday after the second Wednesday in December (i.e., December 17 for this year) to cast their votes for President and Vice President. They then send their votes to both houses of Congress.
Congress then certifies the election results during a joint session, typically held on January 6, a date that has become infamous after the Capitol riot when lawmakers gathered to certify the election results. 2020.
The complex nature of the Electoral College has been controversial since its establishment at the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
Supporters argue that winning requires presidential candidates to have broad appeal across the country, while critics claim it is not representative of the nation’s popular will.
The Electoral College emerged during the Constitutional Convention after a long debate over how to elect the president.
Some Founding Fathers wanted Congress to decide and others wanted it to be a popular vote.
At the time of the Convention, no other country in the world directly elected its chief executive, so the delegates were in uncharted waters.
But some delegates worried that if Congress made the decision, it would offer too much scope for corruption between the executive and legislative branches.
However, others were concerned that 18th-century voters lacked the resources to be fully informed about candidates, especially in rural areas.
They feared that a popular vote could lead to a charismatic megalomaniac winning over a multitude of voters and taking the White House.
An electoral college was the compromise.
The decision also gave more power to slave states and small states.
Slave states wanted to increase their voting power (since they could count slaves as 3/5 of a person when allocating electors) and small states would be guaranteed a minimum of three electors per state.
While polls show that most voters don’t like the Electoral College, there is no easy alternative.
“I think it’s difficult to reach a consensus on what would be a better alternative,” Costas Panagopoulos, a professor at Northeastern University and an expert on the Electoral College, told DailyMail.com.
“Each of these alternatives is going to create biases in favor or against certain types of places,” he said.
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are each trying to win the 270 electoral votes needed to become president.
The signing of the United States Constitution, with George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson at the Constitutional Convention of 1787; oil painting on canvas by Howard Chandler Christy, 1940. The painting measures 20 by 30 feet and hangs in the United States Capitol Building.
The Electoral College places importance on which battleground states candidates must win. But switching to a popular vote system, for example, would give an advantage to densely populated areas, such as New York, California and Texas.
Furthermore, it is simply difficult to change the Constitution, which is what is required to establish a new electoral system. A constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds supermajority in Congress plus ratification by three-quarters of the states.
Most states have adopted a winner-take-all approach when it comes to rewarding their electors. Maine and Nebraska are different in that they distribute their electoral votes based on the winner of each of their congressional districts.
Both Kamala Harris’ and Donald Trump’s campaigns have devised paths to victory, a strategy of which states to win to give them the 270 votes needed in college.
There are 225 electoral votes considered strongly or probably Democratic, meaning they would go to Harris, while 218 are considered likely to go to Trump.
To reach 270, Harris is considering the three ‘blue wall’ states (Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania) that went to Trump in 2016 and returned to Democrats in 2020.
If Harris wins those three states while Trump wins Nevada, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina, Harris would win with the minimum of 270 electoral votes to Trump’s 268.
As part of that route, Harris would need the only electoral vote from Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, and her running mate Tim Walz campaigned there this week.
The last time the blue wall did not vote in unison was in 1988, when Michael Dukakis won Wisconsin and lost Pennsylvania and Michigan.
Overall, Harris’ campaign is focused on winning the key states that Biden won in 2020 (the three blue wall states, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia), as well as North Carolina.
The state most likely to tip the election is Pennsylvania.
It has 19 electoral votes, more than any other swing state, and has received the most attention from Harris and Trump.
Trump’s campaign has largely focused on the state, which he won in the 2016 race but lost in 2020.
A victory there plus a few more states on the battlefield gives him victory.
For example, if Trump wins Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina, he would get 270 electoral votes.
Another path would be for Trump to win Georgia and Arizona (which he lost by a few thousand votes in 2020) and keep North Carolina. If he did, he would only need one each from Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania to win.
A candidate can win without Pennsylvania, but would need to take a majority of the other battleground states to make up for the loss of those 19 votes.
It is very possible to win the popular vote but lose the Electoral College vote. This happened in 2016, 2000, and three times in the 19th century.
A tie in the Electoral College, although a low probability, is possible.
If Trump wins Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina, while Harris wins Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin but loses Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District to Trump, the result would be a 269-269 tie.
If there is a tie, the election goes to Congress to decide.
After the election of 1800 ended with Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr tied, the House needed 36 votes to finally elect Jefferson as president.
Lawmakers later adopted the 12th Amendment to simplify the electoral process.
Protesters disrupted the certification of the electoral college vote on January 6, 2021.
According to him, in the event of a tie, the House of Representatives elects the president and the Senate elects the vice president. They can choose candidates from different parties to serve together in the White House.
To complicate matters, when an election comes to Congress, each state in the House of Representatives gets one vote. And there is no required process for the state to choose who to vote for. Each state – which has Democratic and Republican legislators – would have to decide for itself how it would cast its vote.
They are not required to choose the candidate who won their state in the general election.
Furthermore, the territories have no say.
“Washington DC and all the voters there will have no representation, no say in who will be elected,” Panagopoulos said.
Once a decision is made, each state’s House delegation gets a single vote, and the candidate who receives a majority of 26 of 50 state votes is president. In the Senate, each senator receives one vote to elect the vice president, and 51 votes are needed to determine a winner.
In 1824, Andrew Jackson achieved a plurality of votes, but fell short of a majority. But the runner-up in the Electoral College and the popular vote, John Quincy Adams, was able to gain enough support in the House to win the presidency.