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Defending the Electoral College and the Constitution since 2009
Why does the U.S. use the Electoral College, asks a new video from NBC News. The network’s Zinhle Essamuah attempts to explain it, but flubs some of the details. Here are the big and small mistakes, and some missing context, with the corrections the network ought to make. Remember that for an accurate description of the process, you can visit Electoral College 101.
NBC: “The Electoral College is almost as old as the country itself. But it’s been constitutionally challenged by some estimates more than 800 times.”
Clarification: The first statement is true but odd—the Electoral College is in the original Constitution, so it’s just as old as everything else in the original Constitution.
Correction: How can something in the Constitution be “constitutionally challenged”? She’s trying to say that there have been many constitutional amendment proposals to change it, but makes it sound like they were lawsuits.
NBC: “Each state gets a number of electors appointed by political parties.”
Correction: Electors are nominated by political parties, then elected by state voters. The last time any state appointed presidential electors was 1876 (Colorado had just joined the union and couldn’t afford an election).
NBC: “Electors ultimately choose their state’s winning candidate.”
Correction: Is she trying to say that Electors cast their state’s electoral votes? Why not just say that “Electors ultimately cast the votes for their state’s winning candidate”? Electors “choose” in a sense, but in a more meaningful sense it is the voters who elected them who are making the choice of which presidential ticket will receive that state’s electoral votes. In fact, most Electors this year will be bound, to some degree, by state laws.
NBC: “You saw slave states trying to not count slaves as people.”
Correction: She has it backwards. Delegates from states with large enslaved populations wanted to count slaves as people, while delegates from states with few or no slaves did not. Counting slaves as people would increase the power of slave states. She also leaves out that this debate was about the House of Representatives, and only later would end up effecting the Electoral College until the passage of the 14thAmendment.
If you’d like to learn a lot more about how the Electoral College was created, why, and how it works today, in addition to Electoral College 101, you can check out the film Safeguard: An Electoral College Story.