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Do You Understand the Electoral College? | 5 Minute Video

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Do you understand what the Electoral College is? Or how it works? Or why America uses it to elect its presidents instead of just using a straight popular vote? Author, lawyer and Electoral College expert Tara Ross does, and she explains that to understand the Electoral College is to understand American democracy.

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Script:

I want to talk you about the Electoral College and why it matters.

Alright, I know this doesn’t sound the like most sensational topic of the day, but, stay with me because, I promise you, it’s one of the most important.

To explain why requires a very brief civics review.

The President and Vice President of the United States are not chosen by a nationwide, popular vote of the American people; rather, they are chosen by 538 electors. This process is spelled out in the United States Constitution.

Why didn’t the Founders just make it easy, and let the Presidential candidate with the most votes claim victory? Why did they create, and why do we continue to need, this Electoral College?

The answer is critical to understanding not only the Electoral College, but also America.

The Founders had no intention of creating a pure majority-rule democracy. They knew from careful study of history what most have forgotten today, or never learned: pure democracies do not work.

They implode.

Democracy has been colorfully described as two wolves and a lamb voting on what’s for dinner. In a pure democracy, bare majorities can easily tyrannize the rest of a country. The Founders wanted to avoid this at all costs.

This is why we have three branches of government — Executive, Legislative and Judicial. It’s why each state has two Senators no matter what its population, but also different numbers of Representatives based entirely on population. It’s why it takes a supermajority in Congress and three-quarters of the states to change the Constitution.

And, it’s why we have the Electoral College.

Here’s how the Electoral College works.

The Presidential election happens in two phases. The first phase is purely democratic. We hold 51 popular elections every presidential election year: one in each state and one in D.C.

On Election Day in 2012, you may have thought you were voting for Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, but you were really voting for a slate of presidential electors. In Rhode Island, for example, if you voted for Barack Obama, you voted for the state’s four Democratic electors; if you voted for Mitt Romney you were really voting for the state’s four Republican electors.

Part Two of the election is held in December. And it is this December election among the states’ 538 electors, not the November election, which officially determines the identity of the next President. At least 270 votes are needed to win.

Why is this so important?

Because the system encourages coalition-building and national campaigning. In order to win, a candidate must have the support of many different types of voters, from various parts of the country.

Winning only the South or the Midwest is not good enough. You cannot win 270 electoral votes if only one part of the country is supporting you.

But if winning were only about getting the most votes, a candidate might concentrate all of his efforts in the biggest cities or the biggest states. Why would that candidate care about what people in West Virginia or Iowa or Montana think?

But, you might ask, isn’t the election really only about the so-called swing states?

Actually, no. If nothing else, safe and swing states are constantly changing.

California voted safely Republican as recently as 1988. Texas used to vote Democrat. Neither New Hampshire nor Virginia used to be swing states.

For the complete script, visit https://www.prageru.com/videos/do-you-understand-electoral-college

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47 Comments

  6. ❤😢 I understand that ILLEGALS are not CITIZENS and some states still count them in the population census to say they should get more deligates!😂 DECEPTACONS have been CHEATING AMERICAN CITIZENS for years…time to FIX THAT!!!😂❤

  9. If you use this to understand the Electoral College, you're being fooled.
    1. Voting for President by popular vote would not cause an implosion. A pure democracy is where we vote on everything, like legislation. Today, people vote for their governors, senators, etc. directly and it works every time.
    2. The phrase "tyranny of the majority" is foolish. This video suggests that tyranny of the minority (by this I mean when the electoral college goes against the popular vote) is a better option. Clearly, that is undemocratic.
    3. The video completely misleads people about the idea of voter fraud. In the film, the presenter describes "stealing votes" as the process of states "flipping" from one party to the other when electing presidents. But when she makes her concluding remarks, summarizing her main points, she talks about "stealing votes" as being voter fraud. Clearly, this is not the case. Again, I point to the fact that we directly vote for our representatives on many levels of government. Popular vote is not voter fraud.

  17. I think I like that chunky SilverTowne bar the best, but it would be really hard to pick. Amazing pickups from your friend in Georgia! Yes, as you can imagine, I'm doing my routine catch-up, but really enjoyed seeing all of those vintage pieces. Fantastic! I didn't think I was away that long, but you put out a bunch of new videos lately….whew! I have a few more to go. I hope all is well…keep stacking!

  18. Electoral college was created to get small states to buy into the idea of the new country that founders wanted to start since states like Rhode Island and would have relatively little power. Southern states, likewise, had to be persuaded because they had low free population (actual voters) and knew they would be out-powered by Northern states. In order to actually form the U.S. of A. this compromise was created. It has ended up being the reason that people are losing faith in our government, since a minority point of view has out-sized power over the majority. Whole states were created just to rig the system (Dakotas), and small population states like Wyoming carry so much per person power over California that no one in their right mind would go along with this system today if it was proposed. It needs to be adjusted if we're going to keep it at all. It never was about preventing a mob from voting. No other democracy has this system going on and they all function pretty well. My sources were right — Prager U is pure propaganda, and not based on history or facts, but rather leading listeners in a particular direction by leaving out crucial facts, much like FOX News operates. Run, now, and never look back!

  20. Wrong. Donald Trump won the electoral college, not the popular vote and he's a wannabe dictator. Your point that every state matters is also wrong. Republicans will never try to campaign in California, or Democrats in Iowa. Really, the electoral college just keeps the same problems but causes more.

  21. PragerU, you’re really wrong on this subject. No other functioning democracy on this planet has this electoral college system where a candidate can win despite fewer popular votes.

    Every other functioning democracy has a popular vote. Whoever gets the most votes wins.

    It’s not rocket science.

  23. This is profoundly disingenuous to the point of being absolute baloney. Sure, most of it is factually correct but do not be dazzled into thinking that it makes the slightest case for retaining this outdated institution. Of COURSE we are a republic which means we have no king and vote for representatives – we can't all, after all, fit into the Capitol building to personally discuss revisions to the latest tax bill – but we don't need representatives to help us elect our representatives anymore. We have perfectly capable election institutions that suffer far more from suppression than fraud. It is false to say that elections are less corruptible with electors; that may have been quite true as Madison and Hamiltion envisioned it in the 18th century, but we have already seen how close we came to having the state legislative body in Pennsylvania override the slate of electors there when the election was not even that close (Biden won by over 100,000 votes there.) It is pure casuistry to claim that West Virginia not Florida decided the 2000 election. Of course it was Florida. Don't make it complicated. It is utter nonsense to say that the Electoral College ensures that elections will focus on the entire country. So what if swing states change. If it's one person one vote then every vote counts equally everywhere. But today, there are only eight states that matter, not 50, plus DC. WITHOUT THE EC THERE IS NO LONGER ANY SUCH THING AS A SWING STATE. Now HERE'S THE BIG ONE: The tyranny of the majority?? THAT's a problem no matter how you elect a President and is endemic to the challenges of our democratic life and culture. De Tocqueville did discuss the electors in a positive light, but he absolutely never said so in the context of making his argument about the "despotism of the majority" (and it was largely from him that we get that phrase.) SO, is Prager saying that a better solution is to risk having a tyranny of the minority? ANOTHER BIG ONE: One of the reasons we have the electoral college is to satisfy the census claims of Southern states where enslaved people counted as 3/5s of a person, yet were utterly disenfranchised. Only the electoral system could manage such a process and we sure as hell do not now need a process specifically designed to accommodate the compromise that allowed slavery. Also, the electoral college is not part of the constitution, only the idea of electors. That's important because the process has overall already radically changed since 1780. Why? For political expediency. President and VP on the same ticket? Winner take all? Sanctions against "faithless electors"? (Electors who vote their conscience regardless of what the people want). ALL of these were inventions of party politics and were never envisioned by the Founding Fathers. (To be clear, I am NOT criticizing Madison and Hamilton and the other Founding Fathers. I am taking a swing only at Prager) And if an elector is NOT allowed to vote their conscience, then why are they even there? Think about it. The Founding Fathers envisioned the electors as having the wisdom to override the people's attraction to a demagogue. So what's the point then if they have to vote as they are told? The point is that the nascent "winner take all" political innovation gives disproportionate influence to states where elections are much closer: namely the swing states. And without the EC you will NEVER conceivably have the nightmare of an electoral tie! NOR WILL YOU EVER HAVE ANY SWING STATES. The ONLY purpose I can conceive for the EC is if there were credible third party candidates that disabled the possibility of someone receiving 50%+1 of the vote. Pluralities do not have as much credibility and the EC is helpful here. The EC is also helpful when it amplifies a popular win – but not when it reverses it. Dennis Prager (who runs this site) is playing partisan politics and pretending to be high minded. He's not. Even though this was made in 2015 it wasn't too early to know why the EC currently disadvantages Democrats. That's important here simply because Prager is obviously a partisan Republican. Big Blue states like California (yes, Dennis, California is super Blue today even though in the 1980s they were all in for Reagan – forty years ago) voted for Biden by 26% points whereas Texas (Big Red) voted for Trump by a margin of 5.5%. And so on with New York and Illinois vs. Florida and Ohio. If and when the effect is ever reversed, you won't see this video circulating much anymore. Stop taking lessons in Democracy from a man who sympathizes with how the rioters felt when they stormed the Capitol building. (Heard him say it myself on his radio show)

  29. What's missing from this explanation is how States implement the EC. 48 States award ALL their EC votes to the candidate who receives the most votes in the State. All the votes in a State are combined to determine the majority vote-getter regardless of Party, District, or rural/urban location. Consequently, the EC process does NOT protect rural voters nor minority-candidate voters in a State, as some people argue. Allocation of Reps to States is a different issue.

  30. The Founders were geniuses. It shows how ignorant people today are when they want to scrap this incredible system. But of course the Communist Left wants to get rid of anything that hinders them from controlling every election. The checks that make stealing an election are in their way. As Stalin said, it doesn't matter who votes, but who counts the votes.

  35. PragerU is Questionable based on extreme right-wing bias, promotion of propaganda, the use of poor sources who have failed fact checks, and the publication of misleading information regarding immigration and climate change.

  36. The electoral college is undemocratic, even without the electoral college we would NOT be a pure democracy. We are a representative democracy with three branches of government, that would be the case with or without the electoral college. The presidential election being determined by the popular vote would NOT lead to "tyranny of the majority." The "two wolves and one sheep" metaphor fails to take into account that laws need to be passed by Congress, and unconstitutional laws can be overturned by the Supreme Court. There's a reason why no other country has this insane system.

  38. This is a really bad take at so many levels that it would take a 30 minute video essay to go over each wrong thing in this video.

    The most important of those problems is the claim that the electoral college protects from the so called tyrrany of the majority. (a) Most often popular vote does not differ from the electoral college vote because states' representation in the college is determined according to their population size, so getting bigger states is still more important than getting smaller states. (b) The electoral college system reduces the number of people who are being exposed to campaigning. Those swing states are often not so small–e.g Florida, Penn, Georgia, Ohio. This is because votes there are literally more important than votes in places like Cali, Texas and NY. If US switches to popular vote, every vote will be equally as important. So, candidates will try to reach out to as many voters as possible. They will campaign to attract more people in big states and they will still have to care about people in the smaller states because their votes are equally as important.

    I'm not a historian but I feel that the roots of the electoral college are in representation of states as semi-independent (at least) entities rather than anything else.

  41. Funfact: the electoral college was used so that slave states could count their slaves toward their population and thus have more electors and win regardless if ppl wanted them. Your vote also does not matter if you are not in a swing state which is why 50% of the population doesnt vote as they feel like their not important, 3 million californians and 2 million texans voted against their main political party as states are extremely purple. Tldr all votes should be done by a popular ranked choice with no political partys just people campaigning for ultimate fairness and prime potential for any one to become a president or senator.

  42. Well, that's an interesting take. I've always been of the opinion that the Constitution protects against the tryranny of the majority. What the electoral college really does is make it possible for a tyranny of the minority. As far as coalition building, where do you see coalitions these days? Where is this coalition building in the Republican Party? As far as discouraging voter fraud, there are many mechanisms for discouraging fraud. Whether the Electoral College does or doesn't is immaterial. The real problem with the Electoral College is that it is in the constitution. Hands up everyone who thinks there's a chance for change there…hmmm…looks like a rather pessimistic crowd. However, there is a solution that would remove the tyranny of the minority, and would not require constitutional change. Instead of awarding all their electoral college votes to the winner of the vote, the state could give each party a portion of the electoral college slate in accordance with their share of the popular vote. There is no law against that, and nothing in the Constitution that forbids it.

  44. No it’s a type of gerrymandering stopping proportional voting and making states ideologically singular instead of giving everyone in the state a better chance at affecting the election. You’re welcome y’all.