Electoral College, Pros and Cons, and its Implications on Campaigns and Election Outcomes

U.S. Electoral Process
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Introduction
The United States general election is anything but straightforward due to the involvement of an Electoral College. According to the country’s founding fathers, the process compromises the voting of the president Congress and the popular vote of qualified citizens. This compromise ensures that large states do not dominate the small ones by balancing the power between Congress and State legislatures. In 1804, a 12th Amendment to the Constitution ensured that electors would designate their votes for presidential and vice-presidential candidates in the forthcoming elections. In the event of a tie, the 12th amendment provides a tie braking system where the House of Representatives breaks a tie on presidential electoral votes, and the Senate breaks a tie-on vice-presidential electoral vote. The Electoral College has been active since then in subsequent general elections. Over the years, it has voted candidates into office by extremely slight margins. For instance, in 1960, John Kennedy became the president despite defeating Richard Nixon by less than 120,000 popular votes. Other instances show electors failing to vote for the candidates they pledged to, as was the case in the matchup between Michael Dukakis and Lloyd Bentsen for the vice-presidency. Recently, Donald Trump won the 2016 Electoral College garnering him the victory despite trailing in the popular vote by almost three million ballots. Such events have raised questions as to whether the Electoral College is a constructive tool for promoting democracy. This paper analyzes the Electoral College process, its pros and cons, and its implications on campaigns and election outcomes. Also, the paper will reflect on the role of individual states in election outcomes and consequences on the country’s democracy.
Overview
As the original rationale, the Electoral College was created to compromise at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. The small States in attendance worried that States such as s Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia would dominate the country’s presidency. Consequently, the compromise ensured that each State was allocated Electoral College votes in proportion to its number of Senators and House members CITATION Dar20 \l 1033 (West, 2020). This process is advantageous to small states since each State is represented by two senators regardless of its size. However, it is also beneficial to larger states because House members are based on a state’s population.
Each State is allocated an elector based on its members of the House and Senate. Combined with Washington D. C’s three electors, the Electoral College process involves 538 electors. Each political party chooses a slate of potential electors; however, they are chosen in the respective states. A winning presidential candidate will have the potential electors appointed as the State’s electors except in Nebraska and Maine. In the two states, the winner of the general election receives two electors. The winner of each congressional district may be the same as the overall winner or a different candidate to whom one elector is awardedCITATION Nat211 \l 1033 (Archives, 2021). This system allows the two-State to award electors to more than one candidate. After casting a presidential ballot, the vote goes into a nation comprehensive tally of 48 states and Washington D.C. The winner in those states gets all of the states’ electoral votes, while Maine and Nebraska use their proportional system. A candidate needs votes by at least 270 electors to be elected president, more than half of the electors.
Consequently, presidential candidates have to consider the Electoral College when mapping out the best possible campaign strategy. Persuading voters is an expensive and exhausting undertaking due to the Electoral College. Advertising, theme songs, speeches, and negative campaigning are means candidates optimize as they try to outdo each other. Selective distribution of campaign resources is one of the most evident impacts of the Electoral College on American Politics. Over the past 20 years, some states have grown accustomed to a particular voting pattern, with the stabilization ensuring an accurate result prediction can be made. However, few states are unpredictable, thus garnering the name swing states. Therefore, states such as Florida and Ohio have, over the years, become crucial grounds for campaigns. In the past two elections, Republican candidates prioritized campaigns in Florida over New York due to New York being an obvious win for the Democrats. The same selective campaign strategy is seen with Democratic candidates, where they deprioritize campaigns in a state like Texas, which is an apparent Republican stronghold CITATION Bar121 \l 1033 (Giudice, 2012).
The Electoral College provides a winner-takes-all system in awarding the votes; therefore, candidates don’t get bonus points for winning a State by a more significant margin. Likewise, the losing candidate does not receive any benefits by narrowing the margin of defeat. Thus, some states will be ignored during the campaigns; for instance, the State of Massachusetts reported not seeing a single television ad during the 2000 presidential election. In contrast, residents from Illinois often complain about being bombarded by presidential campaign ads. The 1960 elections showed that John Kennedy and Richard Nixon spent 74% of their campaign time in 24 states. The states were considered doubtful; thus, they became the scene for 88% of the total campaigning for both candidates three weeks before the election day. The same pattern was also seen in 1976 where eleven states failed to register a single visit from Carter or his running mate CITATION Wil16 \l 1033 (Mayer & Joslyn, 2016).
Under the current setup, candidates are focused on winning as many electoral votes as they can. Thus, each candidate runs into issues such as predicting their chances of winning the Electoral College. The other problem is how to allocate available financial and time resources if winning the election is feasible. Thus, electoral geography continues to rise in popularity and importance in influencing general elections. This approach revolves around the geography of voting, which involves the mapping and visualization of votes. The development of technology over the year has enabled it possible to access cartographic representations of electoral data through inexpensive means. Election coverage in televisions and social media features maps and highly detailed geographical representations that can be updated in real-time. In the 1980s and early 90s, high-quality cartography became more common due to powerful and inexpensive computer technology. Therefore, the media was able to incorporate maps in their reporting to show election returns easily. The use of red and blue colors in dividing the map was done in the 2000 general election. As a result, the color combinations contributed to the association of red and blue with the two primary parties. Before that, the maps used other colors such as grey and orange, as seen in the 1992 elections.
In the 2020 general election, the electoral map was the largest for a long time. For instance, a state such as Minnesota is considered a reliable blue state; however, it was contested by republicans CITATION Dav203 \l 1033 (Weigel, 2020). A state such as Georgia was a reliable red state; however, there was potential for the democrats to garner votes. According to the maps of voting returns, it shows that the democrats clinched both Minnesota and Georgia. Numerous factors influenced the presidential outcomes of the 2020 election before the election, such as Trump’s political weakness in suburbs and Biden’s supercharged fundraisings. Regardless, voter turnout is an essential aspect in determining the success of an election. In the 2020 election, more than 160 million votes were cast, which increased almost 20 million votes from 2016’s tally. Turnout increased in every State; however, there was a potentially crucial variation. Most of the...