US Election System

Last week we learned how the US election system works. As you could see, it differs considerably from a system based on the popular vote. As a matter of fact, four presidents in the history of the US took office without winning the popular vote, Mr. George W. Bush included. Watch the video again, so that you can review the vocabulary for electing a president, and maybe you can write and share your reflection on it with the class.

So what's up with Maine and Nebraska?

Maine and Nebraska both use an alternative method of distributing their electoral votes, called the Congressional District Method. Currently, these two states are the only two in the union that diverge from the traditional winner-take-all method of electoral vote allocation.  

With the district method, a state divides itself into a number of districts, allocating one of its state-wide electoral votes to each district.  The winner of each district is awarded that district’s electoral vote, and the winner of the state-wide vote is then awarded the state’s remaining two electoral votes.  

This method has been used in Maine since 1972 and Nebraska since 1996, though since both states have adopted this modification, the statewide winners have consistently swept all of the state’s districts as well.  Consequently, neither state has ever split its electoral votes. 

Although this method still fails to reach the full ideal of one-man one-vote, it has been proposed as a nationwide reform for the way in which Electoral votes are distributed.