‘With the US electoral college, 90% of America is ignored during the Presidential polls — it’s better to have a single nation-wide election’
Nicholas Stephanopoulos is Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Speaking to Srijana Mitra Das, he explains past — and present — legal aspects of the American electoral system:
Q. What is the core of your research?
A. I teach American constitutional law and election law primarily — within the latter, which is my area of specialisation, I look at topics including voting rights, redistricting, money in politics, minority representation and the like.
The US electoral system is quite an enigma. Voters exercise their ballot but an electoral college decides — why?
The US does have an odd and complicated system for electing its President — it’s a lot more complex than just having a single nation-wide poll. We basically have 50 separate state-wide elections and each state determines how its Presidential election will be conducted — typically, each state election decides all the President-elect’s electors from it. To win the Presidency, a candidate must win a majority of the total number of these electors. So, the candidates don’t really compete on a nation-wide basis — they compete to win individual states. Most of the candidates’ attention is thus focused on a handful of highly competitive states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona. The winner of the voters of those states will have a majority of the total number of electors — and be elected President.
The electoral college is not a system I would recommend to other countries — it means 90% of America is ignored
