America’s Electoral College has on Monday 19th December, 2016 made Donald Trump‘s victory official, despite a last-ditch campaign by Democrats hoping against the odds its members could revolt and keep the Republican billionaire out of the White House.

Normally, this step in a US presidential election is a rubber stamp formality that tends to go unnoticed. Not this time.

The country is bitterly divided following Trump‘s shock win over Hillary Clinton, with the Democrat finishing nearly three million votes ahead in the popular tally.

Plus, there’s uproar over allegations of Russian hacking of Democrats during the campaign to sway the vote in favor of Trump.

When US voters cast their ballots on November 8, they did not directly elect the next president but rather 538 electors charged with translating their wishes into reality.

Trump won a clear majority of those electors: 306. At least 270 are needed for election.

Electors — most of them party members without name recognition — gathered Monday in each state plus the District of Columbia that houses the capital Washington to officially designate the next president and vice president.

In most states, electors must vote for whichever candidate won the popular tally in their state.

The Electoral College in American History:

The United States Electoral College is a mechanism established by Article Two of the United States Constitution in the indirect United States presidential election system to select the President of the United States and Vice President of the United States. Citizens of the United States vote in each state at a general election to choose a slate of “electors” pledged to vote for a party’s candidate.

The Twelfth Amendment requires each elector to cast one vote for president and another vote for vice president. In each state and the District of Columbia, electors are chosen every four years on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, and then meet to cast ballots on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. The candidates who receive an absolute majority of electoral votes among the states are elected President and Vice President of the United States when the Electoral College vote is certified by Congress in January.

There are currently a total of 538 electors, corresponding to the 435 Representatives, the 100 Senators, plus three electors for the District of Columbia as provided for in the Twenty-third Amendment. Each state chooses electors amounting to the combined total of its Senators and Representatives.The Constitution bars any federal official, elected or appointed, from being an elector. The Office of the Federal Register is charged with administering the Electoral College. In most elections, the Electoral College has elected the candidate who received the most popular votes nationwide, except in four elections, 1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000.

All states except Maine and Nebraska have chosen electors on a “winner-take-all” basis since the 1880s. Under the winner-take-all system, the state’s electors are awarded to the candidate with the most votes in that state. Maine and Nebraska use the “congressional district method”, selecting one elector within each congressional district by popular vote and awarding two electors by a statewide popular vote.Although no elector is required by federal law to honor their pledge, there have been very few occasions when an elector voted contrary to a pledge.

If no person receives an absolute majority of electoral votes for president, the Twelfth Amendment provides that the House of Representatives will select the president, with each of the fifty state delegations casting one vote. If no person receives a majority of electoral votes for vice president, then the Senate will select the vice president, with each of the 100 senators having one vote.

 

The Constitutional Convention in 1787 used the Virginia Plan as the basis for discussions, as the Virginia delegation had proposed it first. The Virginia Plan called for the Congress to elect the president.[15] Delegates from a majority of states agreed to this mode of election.However, a committee formed to work out various details including the mode of election of the president, recommended instead the election be by a group of people apportioned among the states in the same numbers as their representatives in Congress (the formula for which had been resolved in lengthy debates resulting in the Connecticut Compromise and Three-Fifths Compromise), but chosen by each state “in such manner as its Legislature may direct.” Committee member Gouverneur Morris explained the reasons for the change; among others, there were fears of “intrigue” if the president were chosen by a small group of men who met together regularly, as well as concerns for the independence of the president if he was elected by the Congress.Some delegates, including James Wilson and James Madison, preferred popular election of the executive. Madison acknowledged that while a popular vote would be ideal, it would be difficult to get consensus on the proposal given the prevalence of slavery in the South:

There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to the fewest objections.

The Convention approved the Committee’s Electoral College proposal, with minor modifications, on September 6, 1787.Delegates from states with smaller populations or limited land area such as Connecticut, New Jersey and Maryland generally favored the Electoral College with some consideration for states.At the compromise providing for a runoff among the top five candidates, the small states supposed that the House of Representatives with each state delegation casting one vote would decide most elections.

In The Federalist Papers, James Madison explained his views on the selection of the president and the Constitution. In Federalist No. 39, Madison argued the Constitution was designed to be a mixture of state-based and population-based government. Congress would have two houses: the state-based Senate and the population-based House of Representatives. Meanwhile, the president would be elected by a mixture of the two modes.

Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 68 laid out what he believed were the key advantages to the Electoral College. The electors come directly from the people and them alone for that purpose only, and for that time only. This avoided a party-run legislature, or a permanent body that could be influenced by foreign interests before each election.Hamilton explained the election was to take place among all the states, so no corruption in any state could taint “the great body of the people” in their selection. The choice was to be made by a majority of the Electoral College, as majority rule is critical to the principles of republican government. Hamilton argued, electors meeting in the state capitals were able to have information unavailable to the general public. Hamilton also argued that since no federal officeholder could be an elector none of the electors would be beholden to any presidential candidate.

Another consideration was the decision would be made without “tumult and disorder”, as it would be a broad-based one made simultaneously in various locales where the decision-makers could deliberate reasonably, not in one place, where decision-makers could be threatened or intimidated. If the Electoral College did not achieve a decisive majority, then the House of Representatives was to choose the president from among the top five candidates,ensuring selection of a presiding officer administering the laws would have both ability and good character. Hamilton was also concerned about somebody unqualified, but with a talent for “low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity”, attaining high office.

Additionally, in the Federalist No. 10, James Madison argued against “an interested and overbearing majority” and the “mischiefs of faction” in an electoral system. He defined a faction as “a number of citizens whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” What was then called republican government (i.e., federalism, as opposed to direct democracy), with its varied distribution of voter rights and powers, would countervail against factions. Madison further postulated in the Federalist No. 10 that the greater the population and expanse of the Republic, the more difficulty factions would face in organizing due to such issues as sectionalism.

Although the United States Constitution refers to “Electors” and “electors”, neither the phrase “Electoral College” nor any other name is used to describe the electors collectively. It was not until the early 19th century the name “Electoral College” came into general usage as the collective designation for the electors selected to cast votes for president and vice president. The phrase was first written into federal law in 1845 and today the term appears in 3 U.S.C. § 4, in the section heading and in the text as “college of electors.”