Assignment 5: The Electoral College
Review of how the electoral college works:
The U.S. president is elected not on the basis of popular
votes but on electoral votes. Each state is granted a number of electors
equal to the number of Senators and Representatives it sends to the
U.S. Congress. Each party within a state nominates a "slate of electors".
The presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes in a state
has his or her party's slate of electors appointed. For all but two states
the candidate with more votes in a state gets all of that state's
electoral votes. Appointed electors then meet in their state's capitol
and vote for their candidate. They are morally but not legally bound to
vote for their party's candidate. The Candidate with a majority (> 50%)
of the elector votes wins. If no candidate has a majority the House of
Representatives decides among the top three candidates in a "contingent
election".
Your Assignment has two parts:
1. Go to the electoral
college web site (http://www.jump.net/~jnhtx/ec/ec.html)
In order to understand how the system works, click on
the 1996 election results. Then experiment by clicking various states that
voted Democratic and see what would have happened to the final results
if those states voted Republican. Once you have the hang of this,
answer the following questions:
a. Would the Republican candidate have won in 1996 if
he had won California?
b. What is the fewest number of additional states the
Republicans would have needed to win in order to get 270 electoral votes?
2. Because electoral votes rather than the popular vote determines who wins the election, it is possible for a candidate to become president even though fewer people voted for him or her. This happened in 1888. Study the chart, below.
| Candidate | % of Popular Vote | % of Elector Vote |
| Grover Cleveland (D) | 48.6 (5, 540, 365) | 42 (168) |
| Benjamin Harrison (R) | 47.8 (5, 445, 269) | 58 (233) |
Write a short (no more than 1 page) essay discussing whether Benjamin Harrison deserved to have been elected President in 1888 given that fewer people voted for him. Due Nov. 6th in class.