0048 // Un/Rigged: The American Electoral College

Every four years, the United States of America indulges in a ritual which on it's face seems as much about luck, mystery and conspiracy as governance and civic responsibility.

The entire endeavor — curtained booths, mathematical formulas, arcane electoral rules — seems more at home in a pulp novel than civics class.

Roughly four in ten Americans can be forgiven for being confused about the electoral process in the United States.

Let’s explore what’s really going on.

The original framers of the Constitution were seemingly a terrified bunch.
- They feared concentrated power in the populous cities, scrapping direct Presidential elections.
- They feared a corrupt elite, and thus abandoned the idea of Congress directly electing the President.
- They feared a collapse of Federalism, rejecting the idea of State Governors selecting the President.

At last, in 1789, the Committee of Eleven on Postponed Matters stumbled upon a rather convoluted formula that communicated a sense of vox populi, held the worst of the mob’s instincts in check, and also dispersed power throughout the states, so that no true power base could emerge without a majority of support.
And the Electoral College was born.

II. WHAT IS THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE?

When a citizen goes into a voting booth on election day, the ballot may say the name of the candidates, but the citizen is most definitely not voting directly for those people.

They are casting their ballots for the pledged electors.
The electors are the public’s representation in the Electoral College.

Depending on the state, becoming a potential elector is either an elected or appointed opportunity. When a citizen votes for a candidate on the ballot, they are casting a vote for the elector who is pledged to turn around and vote for that specified candidate in the Electoral College.

The Constitution gives each state a number of electors equal to the combined total of its membership in the Senate (two) and its delegation in the House of Representatives (currently ranging from one to 53 Members).

The lowest, (like DC) have three electoral votes, while California has a whopping 55 electors.

In part, this system shows off one of the main electoral fail-safes of the US electoral process: the belief by the framers that the more people involved in the vote, the less chance a small powerful group can unduly sway it.
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A 'faithless elector' is an elector who turns around and DOES NOT vote for the candidate the voters instructed them to. Twenty-nine states have laws against this, and yet it has happened 157 times, as of 2015.

III. WHAT HAPPENS ON ELECTION DAY?

Despite the protestations of some politicians and pundits, the US electoral system would be exceedingly difficult to “rig” in order to commit large-scale fraud. In general, the processing of votes, be it physical, optical scan, or electronic, passes through multiple secure “gates”, each of which has multiple fail-safes and observers who qualify the results.
First, at each polling location, an election judge observes the handling of ballots, and makes sure each box of ballots is securely sealed. In the case of electronic voting, the memory card is handled in a similar fashion —while some machines allow electronic transmission of data to a processing center, all votes processed this way are deemed “unofficial” until cross-referenced with the machine’s internal tabulation numbers.
Then the ballots, in whatever form, are moved to the vote counting facility. At this location, certified observers from the political parties or candidates observe the vote counting to ensure a fair result. The results are passed on to the larger regional facility, again with observers present. At no time are the machines or the ballots left alone.

At the end of this process, each state verifies its count, and the state’s Secretary of State announces the results.

IV. WHAT HAPPENS AFTER THE ELECTION?

Each state’s electors meet on the Monday following the second Wednesday of December.

They cast their votes for the candidate the voters instructed them to, and those votes are sent to the President of the Senate who reads them before both houses of Congress on January 6th. Oddly, for a national election, there is never an official tabulation of the popular vote totals, except by the media. Remember, they have no bearing on who becomes President.

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There’s obviously some deep systematic problems with the current voting process – the 2000 election is a fresh instance of the electoral college subverting a candidate for whom more actual votes were cast. It’s important to lobby for more robust systems, more oversight, and better vote records, especially when it comes to electronic voting.
However, in a broader sense, the closest American elections get to rigged is the continuing shame of gerrymandering by both parties, which subverts the spirit of democracy, if not the letter.

Regardless of your position, if you're a US citizen, make sure your voice is heard this November.
 VOTE NOW 

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