Each state delegation casts a single vote for one of the top three contenders from the initial election to determine a winner. House of Representatives About this object This pass for the Electoral College's vote count was used again the same day for the President's annual message.
Featured Search Historical Highlights of the House. Learn about Foreign Leader Addresses. Featured Search the People of the House. Majority Leaders. Bean Soup! Featured Black Americans in Congress. Featured Mace of the U.
House of Represen- tatives. House Trivia Timeline. Featured Resources for National History Day Fast Facts The founders struggled for months to devise a way to select the President and Vice President. Historical Highlight February 01, The electoral vote count of the presidential election.
But in practice, electors almost always vote for the candidate who wins the most votes in their state. If an elector votes against their state's presidential pick, they are termed "faithless". In , seven electoral college votes were cast this way, but no result has been changed by faithless electors. The House of Representatives, the lower house of US lawmakers, will then vote to elect the president. This has happened only once, when in four candidates split the electoral vote, denying any one of them a majority.
With two parties dominating the US system, this is unlikely to happen today. Image source, Getty Images. So who are Americans voting for? How does the electoral college work? There are electors in total. Try our quiz on the key states at this election. Has a candidate lost the public vote but become president? Why was the system chosen? Each state has a certain number of votes in the electoral college. Do electors have to vote for the candidate who won? What happens if no candidate gets a majority?
Related Topics. Whether Mr Trump's and Mr Bush's victories are flukes or indicative of inherent flaws in the system hasn't changed its popularity among voters.
According to Gallup, a majority of American poll respondents have favoured a Constitutional amendment to adopt a nationwide popular vote - thus eliminating the electoral college - since The only exception to that was a poll taken in late November , just after Mr Trump's victory, during which Americans were evenly split on the topic. Since World War II, the electoral college has almost always been opposed by the majority of the American people. Why does the US keep the system?
First and foremost, because smaller states that have inflated voting power granted by the system vote to ensure they don't lose that power. Even without smaller states working against the changes, abolishing the electoral college would still require an amendment to the US Constitution, which is an enormous obstacle in and of itself. While it would be difficult, it wouldn't be impossible - the electoral college has been changed three times in the past via Constitutional amendment - but it would require broad majorities in Congress.
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