Here’s how the Electoral College works in Florida
So you’ve cast your vote for the office of president of the United States after arguably the most debated, divisive, hostile election in modern history.
Congratulations!
Now it’s up to that oft-vilified holdover from the 18th century to actually choose the president: the Electoral College.
You probably know that Florida gets a hefty 29 votes in the Electoral College — and we’ll likely pick up more after the 2020 Census is finished — but here’s what you may not know about the rest of the process. How many electoral votes does a candidate need to win? There are 538 electors in all, so 270 is the minimum number to win. Each state gets one elector for every Congressional representative — so Florida has 27 for its House of Representatives delegation, plus two for its senators.
Is Florida is a winner-take-all state? Yes, meaning that, after all the ballots are added up throughout the state, if Candidate A gets one vote more than Candidate B, then Candidate A gets 29 electoral votes — or, put another way, the winning candidate’s political party gets to send 29 electors to the Electoral College. All but two states, Maine and Nebraska, use the winner-take-all system.
According to John Hanley, a UCF lecturer in political science in the School of Politics, Security and International Affairs, the winner-take-all method brings a much higher profile to a populous-but-divided state such as Florida. If we split our electoral votes to match the popular vote
here, candidates wouldn’t work so hard at wooing Florida voters because winning the state — which is often decided by a slim margin — wouldn’t change the outcome much.
Of course, if you’ve been stuck in traffic by the crowds heading to a campaign rally, you might want our swing state to be a little less swingy.
Who chooses the electors? The governor — but the governor can only choose from a list submitted by the executive committee of each political party. And the parties base their selections on party loyalty. On the Democrats’ list, for instance, are Florida
Commissioner of Agriculture and Consumer Services Nikki Fried and former U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson. On the Republicans’ list: state Rep. Randy Fine from Brevard County and state Sen. Joe Gruters, chairman of the Florida Republican Party, from Sarasota. Do the electors have to vote for their party’s candidate? Technically, sort of, yes. According to Hanley, “Florida law says that they must, but there’s no penalty if they don’t.”
Some states have no laws — only pledges to the political parties — but others impose fines for electors who stray from the fold. And, while it’s not common,
it does happen.
Nationally in 2017, seven electors — the most ever — voted for someone other than their party’s nominee. Five defected from Hillary Clinton and two from Donald Trump, but it did not alter the outcome of electoral vote.
Some states also can prevent a co-called faithless elector.
“If you are supposed to vote for, say, Joe Biden, and you try to cast a vote for Kanye West, you’d be removed and replaced with an electoral vote for Joe Biden,” Hanley said. “But it doesn’t appear there’s any mechanism to prevent someone from doing that in Florida. … You can imagine if it does come down to something like 269 to 269 [electoral votes], every single one of those votes is of immense value.”
When do the electors vote? According to the Constitution, it is the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December — a very 18th Century way of expressing things. This year, that means Dec. 14. The Electoral College never actually meets as one body because, again, the plan stems from a time when electors in, say, Oregon, couldn’t hop the red-eye to Washington, D.C. So each state’s electors meet in their respective state capitols.
What if the vote’s a tie? While it has happened before — as fans of “Hamilton” know — it has been a while. The Constitution calls for the House of Representatives to make the decision, with each state having one vote. If they can’t decide by March 4, then the vice president becomes president. Why do we even have this system? Critics — and there are many — contend the system is deeply flawed and gives disproportionate impact to swing states and the two main political parties while serving to further disenfranchise people of color within each state. It also stems from a time when it benefited slaveowning states.
Supporters say it lends stability to the federal nature of our government. We are, after all, a federal republic that consists of 50 messy states.
They also argue it’s easier to isolate Election Day problems to a single state (see: “Florida and hanging chad”).