Question 1

Wait, do you actually need more than half of the electoral votes? What if there are more than 2 candidates? Of the 538, can't you have A win 200, B win 188, and C win 150, and have A win with fewer than 270 votes?

Accepted Answer

What happens if no presidential candidate gets 270 Electoral votes?

If no candidate receives a majority of Electoral votes, the House of Representatives elects the President from the 3 Presidential candidates who received the most Electoral votes. Each state delegation has one vote. The Senate would elect the Vice President from the 2 Vice Presidential candidates with the most Electoral votes. Each Senator would cast one vote for Vice President. If the House of Representatives fails to elect a President by Inauguration Day, the Vice-President Elect serves as acting President until the deadlock is resolved in the House.

source: https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/faq.html#no270

Question 2

So... I was pretty sure our founding fathers put together a Republic... where exactly did "indirect democracy" come from?

Accepted Answer

This part of the video is somewhat inaccurate. In a direct democracy, citizens vote directly on policy initiatives. In an indirect democracy, or republic, citizens elect representatives to make laws for them. Indirect democracy and republic are more or less the same thing.

Question 3

Can a candidate win less than 25 of the 50 states and still become president? Is this possible with the electoral vote system?

Accepted Answer

Yes, In the current election you could do it with far fewer: 11. You can try your combinations here: http://www.270towin.com

Question 4

The problem with the system we have is that one candidate or another will collect that magic number of 270 electoral votes early on with our modern system of communication that never existed back when the Founding Fathers created the United States so why would people living in states far out West even bother to vote since the election would be "over" before their polls even close?

Accepted Answer

The candidates still need those Western electoral votes to win. States like California with lots of votes are very important in the election.

Question 5

At 1:33 Sal says "in most states" the candidate who receives the majority of the popular votes receives all of the electoral votes in that state. What does he mean by "in most states"?

Accepted Answer

Most states do follow the 'winner take all' method for how they give out electoral votes. However, we have 2 states that use a different system -- Maine and Nebraska. They do it based on winning each congressional district.

Question 6

What  about south and north Dakota do they count as 1 for the college or 2 states

Accepted Answer

North and South Dakota are separate states and have their votes counted separately.

Question 7

If you lose an election then will you be able to run again? If not then why would you not be allowed to run again?

Accepted Answer

There's no restriction on running for president a second time if you lose! Several individuals ran for president unsuccessfully more than once in their lifetimes, such as the nineteenth-century politician Henry Clay (whom Abraham Lincoln greatly admired as a young man). One more recent example is Richard Nixon, who lost to John F. Kennedy in the election of 1960, but won the presidency in the election of 1968.

Although there are no official restrictions, the major political parties may not feel it is a good bet to run a candidate who has lost in a previous election. The Democratic or Republican Party may believe that a candidate who lost a presidential election does not have enough popular support to win the presidency in another contest, and choose another candidate.

Question 8

The video says that the number of of electors each State has corresponds to the number of senators and congressmen each state has. But how is this number decided? Why 55 for California, 29 for Florida?. Does this number fluctuates based on population increase or decrease or is it a fixed number?

Accepted Answer

it is loosely tied to population. California has 53 congressmen/women. Each state has 2 senators. thus they have 55 electoral votes. The congressional districts (which decide how many congressmen/women a state receives) is updated per the most recent Census. The Census is issues once every ten years. Does that help address your question?

Question 9

But what about electors, as described here: https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/about.html ?

Accepted Answer

The reason we have electors dates back to the 1700s. The Founding Fathers didn’t really want the US to be a democracy. So they didn’t support the idea of using a popular vote to decide the president. Their initial ideas included letting Congress decide (too much power) and state governors decide (not enough separation between federal and state). John Wilson, one of the Founding Fathers, was inspired by Scotland’s indirect democracy, where elected “commissioners” designate representatives to their parliament. Having state-designated electors voting the president also solves the issue of having "uneducated" voters. Alexander Hamilton wrote that “A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.” The idea was that electors would be knowledgeable and in case the votes were going towards an unfavorable candidate, they would be able to change the direction. This system doesn’t seem very fair because when it was designed, the US did not have a two-party system.

As the video detailed, each state got the number of electors based on how many members of Congress it had. This adds up to 535, and when we add 3 for Washington D.C., we get to 538. In our current two-party system, electors are designated based on how citizens vote (i.e. if California is voted blue, all 55 electors for that state will be Democrats). While electors are supposed to vote according to the state’s population’s choice, some don’t. These are called faithless electors, and historically, faithless electors have not changed the outcome of the election. Chiafalo v. Washington, decided early this year (2020) by the Supreme Court, states that states are allowed to hold electors to their pledges, i.e. punish faithless electors with fines and imprisonment. So far, 32 states have such rules in place. As I’m writing this, the election results are coming in for the 2020 election. These election results are not final though, because whichever candidate is voted by electors becomes president. If any details are incorrect or missing, please let me know.

US government and civics

Course: US government and civics > Unit 9

Sal teaches Grover about the electoral college

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Video transcript