The Electoral College. (Part of Final) Flashcards
How many representatives are there in the house?
435
How many senators are there?
100
True or false, representative and senators are electors?
False
How many electoral votes does DC get?
3
How many electoral votes are there?
538
How many electoral votes does the President need to win?
270/538
What is the winner takes all method?
The winner from the state (in votes), takes all of the electoral votes
Which two states use the district by district system?
Maine and Nebraska
What happens if there’s a tie or no clear majority?
The vote goes to the house
What happens if a vote goes to the house?
Each state gets one vote, and the representatives have to agree on that vote between the top three candidates
Does DC get a vote in the house?
No
What happens if there’s a tie in the house?
It goes to the senate
What is a delegate?
Someone who is picked to represent one way
What is a trustee?
Someone who chooses when the state doesn’t know
What is a partisan?
Someone who votes with their party
What happened in the election of 1800?
Jefferson and Burr tied, and Adams was in third place.
- The house picked Jefferson
- Led to the 12th amendment
What happened in the election of 1824?
Jackson won the popular vote and the electoral college vote, but not the majority
- House gave the presidency to John Quincy Adams
- The speaker of the house helped to sway the vote, and got appointed secretary of state once Adams was in office
What happened in the election of 1876?
Tilden won the popular vote and the majority of the electoral college
- Republicans appointed a committee to look into fraud
- This reversed the decision in fraud states, so Hayes won the electoral college
- Hayes took office and ended reconstruction, which benefited Tilden’s party
What happened in the election of 1884?
Cleveland won the popular vote and the electoral college
What happened in the election of 1888?
Cleveland won the popular vote but not the electoral college
Why didn’t Cleveland win the electoral college vote of 1888?
- A Republican member of Congress decided they would work directly against the President
- He pretended to be an ex - British subject and wrote a letter to Britain’s ambassador
- Ambassador wrote back to say that Britain supported Cleveland
- The letter (“Murchison Letter”) was printed in New York were there were large populations of Irish
- The New York electoral college vote would have made the difference
What happened in the election of 1893?
Cleveland won the popular vote and the electoral college vote
What happened in the election of 2000?
Bush vs. Gore
- All comes down to Florida
- The butterfly ballot
- Nater and the spoiler effect
- – Nater takes away votes from someone on the left side of the spectrum
- Couldn’t recognize voter intent
- – Double votes
- – Hanging chads
- Democrats challenged some counties for a recount
- The Supreme Court said that the recount violated the equal protection clause
Who was the only president to win 100% of the electoral college votes?
George Washington
What percentage of the electoral college votes did Monroe get?
99.5%
What percentage of the votes did FDR have?
57.4% (1936)
What percentage of the votes did Nixon have?
66.5%
Which elections came down to one vote?
2000 and 2004
