One of the most misunderstood concept of the U.S. presidential election involves today’s word. While individuals know who they support, why they support them, and what winning an individual state means, the concept of the electoral college still remains a rather unclear idea to many people. So what does ‘electoral’ really mean, how is it a ‘college,’ and how does it actually work?
In broad understanding, electoral simply means ‘pertaining to electors’ and comes from applying the suffix al, which means ‘pertaining to,’ to the initial word, elector, which is, well, ‘someone who elects.’ As for the college that seems to confuse people, though we have come to associate that word with an educational institution, in this respect, it simply suggests a specific group of people who are selected to perform the task of voting.
While many people may consider the electoral college to be quintessentially American, it actually is not. The first mention of the phrase itself comes from the writing of English scientist and philosopher Robert Boyle who wrote circa 1691 that: “The electoral college had written to the king of Sweden, promising not to proceed to the imperial election.” If you are willing to expand the understanding to an electoral vote or voting process, the usage of the word/phrase can be pushed back to 1673, to Robert Honywood’s translation of Giovan Battista Nani’s History of the Republic of Venice: “Bavaria..had likewise made a late Treaty with the French, in which they promising him the conservation of the Electoral Vote in his Family, both the King and Duke obliged themselves mutually to defend those Countries, which they then possessed, with a certain number of Horse and Foot.”
So, finally, now that we have talked about electoral, how does the Electoral College work? When Americans vote, though the vote may appear to be for a particular candidate, the vote is actually for a specific group of electors. This group of electors, determined in size by the number of representatives a particular state has in the U.S. Congress, represent the will of the people and, in some cases, the particular districts in each state. Gathering in each of the individual states and the District of Columbia on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December, a “Certificate of Vote” is prepared, which counts the specific electoral votes. These collected certificates are sent to Congress (and the National Archives) and tallied in a joint session of Congress on the 6th of January, where the sitting Vice President, in his role as President of the Senate, announces the result.
Bottom line, Americans do not directly elect the President of the United States, but when they vote, they actually vote for the electors of the candidate they support and it is the official body of the Electoral College to formally cast votes for the election of the president and vice president.
