Talk:United States Electoral College

Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022

This 2022 legislation changed a number of aspects of the Electoral process.

The section United States Electoral College#Meetings currently includes:

[...]

The electors certify the Certificates of Vote, and copies of the certificates are then sent in the following fashion:

• One is sent by registered mail to the President of the Senate (who usually is the incumbent vice president of the United States);
• Two are sent by registered mail to the Archivist of the United States;
• Two are sent to the state's secretary of state; and
• One is sent to the chief judge of the United States district court where those electors met.

[...]

In particular rather than "registered mail" , the law now says [https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/4573/text#ide93e7469-13a1-46f5-93f3-856940f78c0f]

“The electors shall immediately transmit at the same time and by the most expeditious method available the certificates of votes so made by them, together with the annexed certificates of ascertainment of appointment of electors, as follows:

So will we see a road rally, mail rockets, drones, and/or delivery robots? Or will an PDF via email suffice? :-)

Lent (talk) 18:27, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Lent (talk) 18:27, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Also changed is the date the electors meet in their respective state legislatures following the presidential election. I've known it to be the "first Monday after the second Wednesday in December" for a number of years, and then I see that the one coming up in 2024 is December 17 (a Tuesday), which is one day later than I thought it would be. Section 106(a) of the law—what I cite here apparently is an early draft of it (a bill at the time)—addresses this. It looks like a fairly straight-forward addition to the "Meeting of electors" section (currently 3.8 in the table of contents), but the old date is mentioned in at least one other place (4.2.4 "Meetings" in the table of contents, for one). Possibly just a simple change there? MPFitz1968 (talk) 21:09, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

References

the US is not the only country using indirect voting

U.S. stands out in how it picks a head of state | Pew Research Center

How Germany’s electoral college was set up to prevent another Hitler - The Washington Post

Thirty democracies are constitutional monarchies (with elected representatives in Parliament selecting the Prime Minister), and another thirty republics use indirect-voting, including Germany and India. 192.252.228.133 (talk) 03:11, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

A prime minister is NOT the head of state. And the indirect elections in other countries are not the same as the electoral college. The EC is chosen for the single purpose of the presidential election. The indirect elections in other countries have preexisting government bodies choose the head of state as an additional duty. This was all explained in your first link --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 22:12, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

"bdieschoose" What do you mean by that? Dimadick (talk) 22:24, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, my phone keyboard was acting up and I didn't proofread the post. I've fixed it now.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 02:22, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Not in Germany; the electoral college used for their presidential elections IS a single-purpose assembly, albeit composed one half by their parliament. Autokefal Dialytiker (talk) 05:30, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

"albeit composed one half by their parliament". There's the difference. I meant for such situations to be covered by the phrase "single purpose of the presidential election", but see how it could be open to interpretation. The constitution of the US expressly forbids federal office holders (including senators and representatives) from being electors. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 15:06, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Reorganize article based on quality and/or notability of the sections

Proposing reorganizing the article to put sections towards the top by:

1) higher-quality secondary sources and analysis. A number of sections currently at the top have really long quotes, citing primary sources that appear to be original research and interpretations that will require quite a bit of work to sort through all the tags before they are encyclopedic.

2) notability: this is a highly-critiqued form of electing president that has been the subject of more constitutional amendment attempts than any other part of the constitution (and a system of electing president that every other democracy has gotten rid of). Elevating these paragraphs would emphasize the most notable parts of the Electoral College (its uniqueness worldwide and debate over its merits and reform attempts). Superb Owl (talk) 17:55, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Source Links

Source link {39} is broken. 107.130.116.202 (talk) 05:21, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

Polling about the Electoral College. Added timeline graph from Pew Research Center.

Polling. Pew Research Center.

References

--Timeshifter (talk) 12:02, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

Change from the general ticket to the short ballot

Before the 1900s, voters voted for electors for the electoral college instead of the the presidential candidate. In the early 1900s, the short ballot was introduced, meaning voters casted votes for the candidate themselves. (they were actually casting ballots for an entire slate of electors). However, it doesent say anywhere when states adopted the short ballot anywhere. The only states it says this for is North Carolina and Ohio which adopted it in 1932. Lertaheiko (talk) 15:32, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Apportionment history inadequately covered

The apportionment process to determine the size of the House and allocation of Electors/Electoral College votes is touched on but presents a skewed/ahistorical view of the Electoral College.

Firstly, there doesn't seem to be a single table displaying the number of House Representatives and Senators following each Census year and/or admission yeat of new states to the Union, and instead points to the current artificially fixed House size of 435 members and 538 Electors/Electoral College votes as givens when both grew every decade from 1790 to 1910 as outlined by the Constitution.

From the first Census in 1790 up to 1860, the 3/5ths Clause of course taints or even invalidates the representational legitimacy of both the House and Electoral College, but the passage of the 14th Amendment makes relationship between the tabulated Census population and House Size (and therefore Electoral College size) at least plausibly legitimate for Census years 1870, 1880, 1890, 1900, and 1910 (and possibly the proposed House size of 480 Representatives for Census year 1920 that failed to pass).

The 435-member House size is tied to the 1910 Census population of ~92 million, and should have grown every decade following the Census if not for Congress first failing to grow the House following the 1920 Census and then artificially capping the size of the House with the Reapportionment Act of 1929./ Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929.

As a quick example, the presidential election of 1908 had 483 Electors/Electoral College votes while the presidential elections from 1912-1956 had 531 Electors/Electoral College votes.

(Again, a simple table with Columns for House size, Senate Size, House + Senate Size, and Electoral College size would likely be adequate, with each row corresponding to a year the Electoral College grew--whether because of new Census/House apportionment, admission of a new state to the Union, passage of the 23rd Amendment, etc.) SecretJanitor (talk) 19:33, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Multiple states choose electors by districts.

Missouri also chooses electors by districts. They have 2 at-large electors. The Electors are not bound to vote for the candidate that won the popular vote in their district. In 21 states the Electors are not bound to vote for the candidate that won the popular vote. In only 14 states are the elector's votes voided if they vote for a candidate that lost the popular vote in their state or district. In some states like Montana the elector is replaced if they vote for the candidate that lost the popular vote in the state. 2600:6C67:60F0:AD10:230:95E7:F05F:1553 (talk) 18:28, 13 November 2024 (UTC)