What’s all this fuss about “battleground states?”
The answer, in two words, is “Florida.”
That state is a big recent reminder of how a presidential candidate can win the popular vote but lose the election. It’s happened four times in American history – 1824, 1876, 1888 and 2000.
The last time was the George W. Bush vs. Al Gore race. Florida became a battle about ballots that lasted six weeks during which time none of us knew for sure who would be our next president.
On Election Day, Bush had won Florida by 1,784 popular votes, such a razor-thin margin that a ballot recount was triggered. The patient counting, legal wrangling and nasty accusations continued. Finally, on Dec. 12, the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision granted Bush the victory.
Gore had won the nationwide popular vote by 543,895 votes. Nonetheless, he didn’t win a majority of electoral votes – 270. Florida’s 25 electoral votes were what mattered win or lose. Bush prevailed by 271 electoral votes, only two more than needed. Gore won 266. If the recount and/or Supreme Court had ruled in Gore’s favor, he instead of Bush would have been granted Florida’s 25 votes for a winning grand total of 291.
Many Americans, including some election scholars, think the electoral system is outmoded and should be dropped in favor of election by popular vote. However, even with the best of intentions, it’s almost impossible to overturn what the U.S. Constitution ordained 230 years ago.
After America defeated the British, it was time to draw up a “blueprint” for a new nation. One of the big questions was how to elect a new president. All agreed George Washington should be the first, but who should be the next?
All too fresh in the minds of the Founding-Father visionaries were the monarchial tyrannies rampant in Europe, as well as feuding rebel factions that can destabilize any society, any country. The architects of the U.S. Constitution were meticulously careful to create a system of checks and balances to rein in tyrannies and factionalisms. The electoral method was just one of many compromises arrived at within the checks-and-balances framework.
Momentous questions hung over the Constitutional Convention in 1787:
If Congress elects a president, couldn’t one powerful congressional faction hold sway in a form of possibly corrupt cronyism?
If the popular vote decided who is to be president, wouldn’t that favor the powerful interests concentrated in the big urban centers? Or could it favor a growing number of frontier people in westward expansion at the expense of urban interests? And what about the smaller states, with less population, that might be left out of any say so?
They compromised – thus, the electoral system, yet another way of dissipating power, of checks and balances.
Basically, here is how it currently works: In the months preceding a presidential election, political parties at their state conventions choose a slate of electors. They are the people who will officially cast votes affirming who won the presidential election in their state. Each state has its own number of electors, based on population, on how many U.S. representatives that state has in the U.S. Congress. One representative is “equal” to about 700,000 people in a state. Thus, Minnesota has eight U.S. Congressional districts, eight representatives, and so it currently has eight electors, plus one for each of the two U.S. senators – a total of 10 electors. New York, heavily populated, has 35 electors. Seven states have only three electors each. The District of Columbia also has three electoral votes.
In total, there are 538 electors in the nation.
The electors pledge to deliver their votes in accord with which president and vice president win in their state. They cast those votes in their state capitals in December weeks after the presidential election. The votes are then sent to Washington, D.C. for official certification.
Back to Florida, to battleground states. The reason presidential candidates spend so much time campaigning fiercely in battleground states is because those are states that are usually more or less evenly split in the number of people who vote Democrat and Republican. And battleground states are typically those that have a large number of much-needed electors in order to win the presidency: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, to name just three. California and New York have huge numbers of electors, but both usually favor Democratic presidential candidates. Most Southern and Western states typically favor Republican contenders. Thus, they are usually not battleground states.
This election season is interesting because tightening poll numbers between Trump and Clinton have given the typically Republican-leaning states of Nevada, Arizona, Georgia and Texas “battleground” status.
Ultimately, it’s electoral votes that count. Stay tuned to Nov. 9.
