Understanding the Real Election Process the Electoral College

Tuesday, November 4^th, 2008, American’s will go to the poll and vote, the votes are tallied, and the person with the most votes wins.  Unfortunately the Electoral College that is used to determine who will be our next President and Vice President is much more complicated.  The Electoral College consists of 538 representatives who will make the final determination of who will represent our country for the next 4 years.  This selection will be made on December 15, 2008.  On that day the electors will meet in their State’s Capitol.  All electors are not usually present, only those who have been selected to cast the ballots.  The State’s Secretary of State or the equivalent opens and reads the Certificate of Ascertainment.  This will list the people who have been chosen to cast the electoral votes.  When their name is called, each person will announce their presence.  Any vacancies are then filled.  Then a chairman, a vice chairman (not always), and a secretary (not always) are selected.  The floor is then opened in many states to the politicians who may choose to make a speech.  One or two people are chosen to handle the ballots after voting, each elector fills out and submits a ballot for their selection of the Presidential and Vice Presidential Candidate.  Once the vote is complete, 5 copies of the Certificate of Vote are completed.  They state the number of electoral votes cast for each office and how many votes each candidate received.  Each elector must sign the certificates. One copy goes to the Vice President of the United States by certified mail.  It is then prepared for a joint session of Congress and the ballots are arranged alphabetically

When we go to the polls and cast our vote we will not be voting for John McCain, Barack Obama, Ralph Nader, Bill Ingram (Independent Party), Cynthia McKinney (Green Party), etc., instead we will be voting for the electors that will select our next President.  The Constitution of the United States does not use the term “Electoral College.” At the Constitutional Convention it was proposed that each state should be allowed the number of votes equal to the number of representatives in Congress, and that these persons should cast their vote for the President on behalf of that state.  The Constitutional Convention Delegates approved this method on September 6^th, 1787.  This method was favored because of their fears of leaving the choice of the President in the hands of a few men, where the President could become a puppet for those individuals. The Constitutional Delegates assumed that the states would used district systems to spilt up the number of electors, that each Presidential Elector would independently decide who to choose for their candidate, and that the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates would not be on the ballots together.  The original design would have left most elections in the hands of Congress to select the President and Vice President of the United States. James Madison in his Federalist Papers Number 39, explains the method for selecting the President. The method is identical to that used to select our 2 houses of Congress, the House of Representatives, and the Senate.  The selection would be on a state-based method as is the Senate, and a population-based method as is the House of Representatives.  However, the term “Electoral College” does not become a common term until the 1800s, with its definition being “a group of citizens selected to cast votes for President and Vice President.”  3 U.S.C. § 4, with a section heading “College of Electors”, became part of the Constitution in 1845.