Is the Electoral College responsible for electing the president?

The Electoral College consists of 538 electors. A majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect the President. Your State has the same number of electors as it does Members in its Congressional delegation: one for each Member in the House of Representatives plus two Senators.

What was the original purpose of using the Electoral College to elect presidents quizlet?

What was the original purpose of the Electoral College? The original purpose was to keep misinformed/poorly educated people from making a mistake and choosing the wrong president.

Can a president win the popular vote and not the electoral vote?

The winner of the Electoral College vote usually is the candidate who has won the popular vote. However, it is possible to win the presidency without winning the popular vote.

What is the role of the Electoral College?

When citizens cast their ballots for president in the popular vote, they elect a slate of electors. Electors then cast the votes that decide who becomes president of the United States. Usually, electoral votes align with the popular vote in an election.

What is the basic purpose of the Electoral College quizlet?

The Electoral College was created for two reasons. The first purpose was to create a buffer between population and the selection of a President. The second as part of the structure of the government that gave extra power to the smaller states.

Who approves the electoral votes?

Congress meets in joint session in the House of Representatives on January 6 to count the electoral votes. The Vice President, as President of the Senate, is the presiding officer. Tellers open, present, and record the votes of the States in alphabetical order.

Why does the United States have an electoral college?

A: The framers of the Constitution didn’t trust direct democracy. Why does the United States have an Electoral College when it would be so easy to directly elect a president, as we do for all the other political offices? When U.S. citizens go to the polls to “elect” a president, they are in fact voting for a particular slate of electors.

How many electoral votes does it take to win the presidency?

In modern elections, the first candidate to get 270 of the 538 total electoral votes wins the White House. The Electoral College was never intended to be the “perfect” system for picking the president, says George Edwards III, emeritus political science professor at Texas A&M University.

What happens if there is no absolute majority in the Electoral College?

Each state may cast one vote and an absolute majority is needed to win. Similarly, the Senate decides who the next Vice President will be if there is no absolute majority after the Electoral College vote.

Should we get rid of the Electoral College?

Plus the old-school electoral system has its benefits. With the Electoral College, for example, there’s no chance of a run-off election or a protracted national recount. Columnist George Will shudders to think of what would have happened in the 1960 election if there had been no Electoral College.