Why does the electoral college and not the popular vote elect your president and vice president?

Answer 1

In the 1780s, when the Constitution was being written, a direct popular election over the entire extent of the United States was seen as logistically very difficult, if not impossible. In addition, many political leaders were not confident in the value of direct popular election, being concerned about the "fickle mob." So they developed a process in which the people of each state voted for Electors, who would meet in their state capitols on a specified day and use their best judgment to cast votes in the Electoral College for Preident and Vice-President.

Since then, technology has made direct elections over wide areas less difficult, and concerns about the rule fo the mob have declined, so some now advocate direct election of the President. Electors are not pledged to vote for specific candidates.

Nevertheless, the Electoral College retains some utility. In 2000 a recount in Florida was a close and contentious activity and decided the outcome of the election. A related problem with direct popular is the lack of control on eligible voters and how many of them there are. With the electoral college system, the total number of electors of fixed and the number alloted to each state stays constant for 10 years and is adjusted according to the official census. Under the current system, a single state can have no more effect on the election than its allotted number of electoral votes allows. However, if popular votes counted, some state(s) might decide to relax requirements, let ineligible people vote or let people vote more than once with false ID's or turn in false election returns and submit millions of votes more than their legal population. If the election was tipped in this way, other states might retaliate by doing the same thing in the next election. Without an Electoral college, or equivalent, any recount in a Presidential Election would have to be nationwide and it could be a real job- like taking another census.

Answer 2

At the time the US Constitution was originally written, in the late 18th century, the whole idea of democracy was very radical, and common people were still regarded with considerable distrust. It was thought to be dangerous to allow people to directly elect a President because the general public might turn out to be too stupid to pick a suitable candidate. To provide some protection against this possibility, the public does not directly elect a President, but instead it elects electors, who then get together in the Electoral College and elect a President, being guided by the wishes of the people who elected them. (The hope is that the electors will be the elite, smart people, who know better than the general public.) However, the electors are not required to follow the instructions of the people who elected them, if they believe that it is necessary to vote for someone else. They can overrule the general public for their own good. In practice, the Electoral College has proved to be a rubber stamp type of organization that automatically votes the way the general public wants them to vote, but the theoretical possibility still exists that they might exercise the right to vote differently.

Answer 3

The elections in 2000 and 2016 both had the candidate with the largest number of votes overall end up losing the election. This is due to the Electoral College system.

A number of people are confused as to why this system is used, since it seems to go against the will of the people.

The answer is a little complicated and is rooted in the concerns of the former colonies that were setting up the US government in the first place.

The states with large populations felt that, since they had more people, they should have a larger "say" in the government than the states with smaller populations.

The states with smaller populations felt that, in a purely population-based system, their unique concerns would be overwhelmed and they would just become subservient to the wishes of some "foreign" government, which is more or less the situation they just fought a war to get out of.

The compromise that was eventually reached is that the Legislature of the United States would be composed of two houses. One of them (the House of Representatives) would have its members apportioned by population. But in the other one (the Senate) all states would have a precisely equal voice.

(There was a further debate about whether slaves counted towards population or not; the mostly non-slave owning and industrial states in the north wanted population to only count free people and the mostly slave-owning and agricultural states in the south wanted to count slaves as well. The compromise that was eventually reached there was that a slave counted as 3/5ths of a person for the purposes of determining representation in the House. This is of course irrelevant today, but it's how the Constitution was originally set up.)

The same system, slightly modified, was used to apportion votes for President. Each state would send a number of electors for President equal to their representation in both the House and Senate. This effectively allows the smaller states to have a proportionally greater voice in determining the President and ensures that their concerns are not ignored.

So the reason we still use the Electoral College is probably mostly inertia (it's hard to persuade people to change a system that's been in place literally since the founding of the nation), but also that it prevents the most populous states from entirely determining who should be president and effectively disenfranchising the smaller (in terms of population; Alaska is a "small" state by this definition) states.

It is also worth noting that the Constitution does not actually specify how these electors are to be chosen. In the first century or so of the country's existence, not all states even bothered to have a popular vote for President; instead, in some states, the Electors were chosen by the State Legislature (which was itself elected by popular vote, so the popular vote wasn't COMPLETELY irrelevant, just even further removed from the process than it is today). With the exception of Maine and Nebraska, all states currently send electors pledged to vote for the winner of the general Presidential election in the state. (Maine and Nebraska send two electors to vote for the overall statewide winner, and an additional elector for each congressional district, who votes for the winner in that district. Virginia is considering a similar plan, except that the two "statewide" electors will go to the candidate who won the majority of the districts, rather than the candidate with the highest overall popular vote total within the state.) A modification of the electoral college system to use a similar method is probably more likely than scrapping it completely, though even that isn't terribly likely in some states (it's not probable that the Democrats in California, or the Republicans in Texas ... the two states with the largest number of Electors ... would be thrilled about giving up their virtually guaranteed lock on those Electors).

Answer 4

Such is the way that the US Constitution requires the election to be conducted.

The states can choose their electors as they see fit and they all chose them by popular vote now.