How the Electoral College decides the presidential election – and what role Georgia plays in the outcome

Georgia’s status as a swing state has drawn Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump to the state often to recruit voters. If candidates want to win elections, it is paramount that candidates win swing states.

That’s because the Electoral College determines who wins the presidency. It is a process that helps balance the influence states have on the outcome of elections.

According to the Cook political reportthere are almost as many voters in Republican as in Democratic states. This is why swing states like Georgia have the power to determine who wins the presidency.

How does the Electoral College work?

The Electoral College consists of 538 electors nationwide and a presidential candidate must receive 270 votes to win an election.

In most states, the number of electors is determined by the sum of the seats in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Each state has two U.S. Senators and the number of U.S. House representatives is determined by population size.

For example, Georgia has two U.S. Senators and fourteen House of Representatives representatives; therefore it has 16 electors.

In all fifty states, each political party has its own electoral list on deck prior to the elections. Whichever candidate wins the popular vote in a state, that party’s list of voters participates in the Electoral College.

For example, Biden won the popular vote in Georgia in 2020. That’s why sixteen Democratic electors voted in the electoral college. (The separate list of 16 Republicans was not allowed to vote.)

The winner of an election can be projected on election night, even though the election process has not yet been completed. This year, electoral vote will take place on December 17 and The counting of those votes by Congress will take place on January 6.

According to the election, voters pledge to vote for their party’s candidate before the election Library of Congress. This unanimous vote is called a winner-takes-all system. It is extremely rare for voters to vote for another party’s candidate, also known as ‘disloyal voting’.

Why the Electoral College?

The Electoral College creates a more level playing field for states with drastically different populations. Under a popular voting system, states with small populations would have little influence compared to states with huge populations.

It was originally created to increase the country’s political power southern slave states and protect the institution of slaveryPBS reports.

About 63% of Americans would prefer the popular vote to decide the election, rather than the Electoral College. Pew Research Center. The survey found that more Democrats oppose the Electoral College than Republicans, but Republican support is declining.

There have been five copies in American history where the Electoral College produced a different result than the popular vote, according to the National Archives. The two recent examples were in 2000 and 2016, when Al Gore and later Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in those respective years.

The Georgian Electoral College

Each state’s party leadership determines the list of electors prior to the election. For example, the Georgia Republican Party has a list of sixteen people who would automatically become voters if Trump wins Georgia.

The way georgia.gov it states: “When you vote for a presidential candidate, you are not actually voting for the president; you vote for a group of people called ‘voters’.”

Voters are typically state legislators or other notable party members in the state. The only requirement is that the individual may not hold federal office.

Notable names among 2020 Democratic voters included Stacey Abrams, who ran unsuccessfully for governor of Georgia in 2022, then-state Rep. Nikema Williams (now representing the U.S. House of Representatives) and long-serving state legislators Gloria Butler and Calvin Smyre.

The Fake Voters of the 2020 Election

In the 2020 election, Biden received 302 electoral votes, more than the 270 needed to win.

In the aftermath of the election, some states, including Georgia, attempted to certify alternate electors to overturn the results in Trump’s favor.

It was a coordinated plan that required seven swing states — all states that Biden had won — to appoint Republican electors to falsely declare Trump the winner in those states.

The scheme allegedly fraudulently gave Trump the electoral votes he needed to win the election.

In Georgia, 16 fake voters signed a document falsely declaring that Trump had won Georgia.

The plan failed and the sixteen individuals were among the nineteen people charged with racketeering The case of Georgian election interference.