Electoral College

1
Electoral College

• By. Mr. Langreck

2
Popular Vote

• What is Popular Vote?
• Voting done by people
• When do People Vote?
• First Tuesday following a Monday in November
• November 4th, 2008
• How do people Vote?
• Each state is different

3
Electoral College

• Formal process of Electing President
• Each State has different value
• Iowa has 7
• California has most-55
• Least any state can have is 3
• How value determined

4
Number of Electoral Votes

• 538 Total
• 100 senators
• 435 members of House of Representatives
• 3 for District of Columbia
• Magic Number
• 270
• One more than half

5
Why do we use the College

• Why?
• Founding Fathers were afraid of voters
• Voter can be tricked
• Voters are stupid
• Gave a layer of protection to make sure bad guys
  not elected

6
Problems

• Complicated
• No Guarantee Elector will go with popular State
  vote
• Possibility of a tie 269-269
• Person with most votes may not win
• 1824
• Jackson v. Adams
• 2000
• Bush v Gore

7
In Case of Tie

• President elected by House
• Each state gets 1 vote
• Currently Dems control 27 states
• VP chosen by Senate