The Electoral College: How Does It Work and Why Is It Still a Thing?

Barbara Perry is a political scientist at UVA’s Miller Center of Public Affairs. Early in her career she joked about something created by the founders of this country – the electoral college.

“I still have a T-shirt to this day that says ‘Property of the Electoral College Athletic Department,'” she says with a chuckle.

But for the founders it was no joke.

“They had enough pessimism about human nature to worry about the kinds of people the people had to elect,” Perry explains.

They feared that voters might fall for a demagogue.

“Someone who tells lies, half-truths, appeals to people’s base instincts, often chooses a group of people to be defined as ‘the other’ or to be prejudiced against, and then – as Alexander Hamilton said – passes from being a demagogue to court the people to being a tyrant.”

So they set up plan B – a group of disembarked white people who will gather after vote and do final decision as to who should be the commander in chief.

“Smart, educated + men would gather after the people had voted and made their choice, and if it was different, so be it, because that was the check on the popular will in case it got out of hand. It was meant to be the judgment of these statesmen + wise and educated – to choose the right person, in case the people would not. + But in more modern times we know that voters usually vote the way their state voted, so we don’t even get what the founders hoped for.

Political parties here in Virginia pick 13 electors like Matt Rowe, 43, of Fredericksburg.

“We elect electors at congressional district conventions — one from each congressional district — and then at our state convention we elect two more to round out the 13.”

He and retired diplomat Gary Schatz think we should ditch the electoral college, but still thought it was an experience worth living.

“They hold the ceremony in the chambers of the House of Delegates. It’s exactly the same process we’ve been going through for the last two hundred years in Virginia – as it is in all other state capitals. To be able to be a part of that was special.”

“The voter is a kind of last straw. This is also my last scream. I’m 80 years old.”

Schatz says there’s no money to be made.

“We might have lunch, but other than that no.”

And voters can’t change their mind about which candidate will get their vote.

“We have a faithless voter law,” Rowe explains, “so if someone has the idea that maybe they’re not going to support the person they’ve been elected to support, then they’re going to be replaced.”

Because each state—large and small—has a number of electors equal to the number of congressional districts plus two less populous states, they have an advantage. And there is a bigger problem. All but two states—Maine and Nebraska—go with a winner-take-all model. In most states, if 50.1% of voters favor a single candidate, all of the electoral votes go to that person.

Which is why, four times, the electoral college has given us the candidate who lost the popular vote – Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, Benjamin Harrison in 1888, George W. Bush in 2000, and Donald Trump in 2016.

After that election there were calls to get rid of the electoral college, but Professor Perry points out that it is in our constitution so we should amend it.

“That would either have to come from a constitutional convention, which I don’t think we want to risk right now, but it could also come through Congress.”

But Republicans dominate the House, and their party has benefited the most from the electoral college, so they don’t want to change it.

Democrats came up with another way — launching an organization of states that pledge to give their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the national popular vote, but that agreement won’t go into effect until he has at least 270 electoral votes – enough to win the presidency. At this time, 17 states and the District of Columbia have joined. Virginia is not among them and has only 207 electoral votes.