Why no foreign-born American as president?

The Electoral College

What is the Electoral College?
It is the name applied collectively to all 538 electors.

The term "Electoral College" does not appear in the Constitution but was written into federal law in 1845, and appears in the United States Code (3 U.S.C. section 4), as "college of electors."

Does the Electoral College convene, like a college faculty would gather for a meeting? No, the Constitution requires each state’s electors to convene in the state capitol, but the electors from all 50 states and the District of Columbia never all meet in one place at the same time.

Why don’t all 538 electors meet in one place at the same time?
The Framers of the Constitution feared that, in the words of Alexander Hamilton, if the electors all met in one place, they would be vulnerable to "cabal, intrigue and corruption" and that foreign governments who sought "to gain an improper ascendant in our councils" might bribe them.

Also, Hamilton warned, electors would be more prone to "heats and ferments, which might be communicated from them to the people" if they met in one place.

The winner-take-all system

Regardless of whether a candidate wins 51 percent of the votes in a state, or, in a multi-candidate race, say, 35 percent of the votes in a state, why does he or she get 100 percent of that state’s electoral votes?
Forty-eight states have laws that mandate a winner-take-all system for electoral votes: The person with the statewide plurality of the votes gets all the electoral votes.

What does "plurality" mean?
In this context, it means "more votes than anybody else who ran."

In an election in which there are more than two choices (as there usually are if you include Libertarian and other minor-party candidates), a plurality is the number of votes cast for the winning choice, even if that number is less than 50 percent.

Most electoral laws for national, state and local elections in the United States say the winner is the candidate who gets the plurality.

A few states require a majority in some elections: for instance in Louisiana, elections for governor, attorney general and other state offices have an all-inclusive primary as round one of its voting. If no candidate gets a majority in that first round, then the top two vote-getters, no matter which party they belong to, proceed to a final round.

Which states do not use the winner-take-all system?
Maine and Nebraska. In those two states, one elector is awarded to the candidate receiving the most votes in each of the congressional districts, and the remaining two electoral votes are awarded to whoever gets the most votes statewide.

Plurality versus majority

How is a majority different from a plurality?
A majority is a number more than half of the total votes cast.

So how does a plurality vote work in presidential races?
A few examples will make it clear: In the 1968 election, Richard Nixon, competing with two other major candidates, Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace, won only 38 percent of the vote in Tennessee, but he got all of Tennessee’s electoral votes.

Election A to Z questions What questions do you have about how America elects its president? Click here to e-mail your questions to Tom Curry and we’ll answer the best of them each week.

In 1992, Bill Clinton, competing with two other major candidates, Ross Perot and George H.W. Bush won only 40 percent of the vote in Colorado, but he got all of its electoral votes.

But doesn’t this mean that the majority of voters in Colorado in 1992 – 60 percent of them – didn’t want Clinton to be president?
Yes, it does mean that. But it also doesn’t matter legally. The plurality system is the one that has evolved: pluralities win, not always majorities.

Changing the electoral system

Are there moves afoot to change the electoral vote system?
Maryland and New Jersey have enacted a measure called the National Popular Vote bill.

Under this law, a state's electoral votes would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

The Maryland legislation would not take effect until the enactment of identical laws in enough other states to reach a majority of the electoral votes, that is, 270 out of 538.

But smaller states such as Vermont, South Dakota, and Alaska would lose clout under this proposal. The Electoral College system guarantees that every state, no matter how small its population, gets at least three electoral votes.

Could Congress scrap the electoral vote system?
It could begin to do so by proposing an amendment to the Constitution, but that proposal would need to be ratified by three-quarters of the states.

Has Congress ever considered scrapping the Electoral College system?
Yes, in 1969 the House approved a proposed constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College and to provide for direct popular election of the president.

That plan called for a minimum of 40 percent of the popular vote required to win the presidency or a runoff election between the top-two finishers should the minimum not be met.

The proposal was killed in the Senate by legislators from small states and Southern states.

If the electoral vote system appears to be undemocratic, what arguments do supporters of the electoral vote system use to defend it?
Republican presidential contender Ron Paul argued in 2004 that the Founding Fathers "created the electoral college to guard against majority tyranny in federal elections. The president was to be elected by the 50 states rather than the American people directly, to ensure that less populated states had a voice in national elections."

He added, "Not surprisingly, calls to abolish the Electoral College system are heard most loudly among left elites concentrated largely on the two coasts. Liberals favor a very strong centralized federal government...The Electoral College system threatens liberals because it allows states to elect the president, and in many states the majority of voters still believe in limited government and the Constitution."

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