As everyone sits and waits to see the final results of the Presidential elections mass medias began to report issues of ballots across the country. These issues of more votes cast than registered voters, votes being cast by deceased individuals and ballots being found in trash containers.
Every election has had it’s ups and downs but this election has shown more than any other.
Here in South Carolina it was not until around 8 P.M. when voting results began to start being released to the public on Nov. 3rd, 2020. When the information began to be released it showed Presidential candidate Biden in the lead, but as more and more information was released it clearly showed President Donald Trump leading in votes. This was the same throughout most of the country.
At the time of this article current standings showed Candidate Biden in the lead, but this is also among the issues, mentioned above, that have been discovered by voting officials.
What most people fail to remember or understand is that the president is elected by what is called “Electoral Votes”. Electoral Votes are defined by Dictionary.com as:
electoral vote
noun
the vote cast in the electoral college of the U.S. by the representatives of each state in a presidential election.
So, what is the Electoral College?
If you’re a United States citizen, 18 years of age or older, you probably think you have the right to vote for presidential candidates in the national election. That’s partially correct. When citizens cast their ballots for president in the popular vote, they elect a slate of electors. Electors then cast the votes that decide who becomes president of the United States.
Now, there have been numerous times the White House was taken without the popular votes from the Electoral College.
The founders thought that the use of electors would give our country a representative president, while avoiding a corruptible national election. The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 report that,
…[T]he members of the General Convention…did indulge the hope [that] by apportioning, limiting, and confining the Electors within their respective States, and by the guarded manner of giving and transmitting the ballots of the Electors to the Seat of Government, that intrigue, combination, and corruption, would be effectually shut out, and a free and pure election of the president of the United States made perpetual.
The Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, explains what might seem like a convoluted system to voters today:
Each state shall appoint, in such manner as its legislature may direct, a number of electors equal to the whole number of senators and members of the House of Representatives to which the state may be entitled in the legislature.
But no person shall be appointed an elector who is a member of the legislature of the United States, or who holds any office of profit or trust under the United States.
The electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for two persons, of whom one, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves.
In some elections, the Electoral College has voted presidents into office by extremely slim margins, as was the case in 1960, when John Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon by fewer than 120,000 popular votes. Electors have even failed to vote for the candidates to whom they were pledged, as was the case when an elector pledged for Michael Dukakis voted instead for vice-presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen.
As outcries come from both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party on who is the winner, one can bet that even after all votes are counted allegations of wrong doing will still be stated.
The Country as a whole seems to have voted for President Donald Trump when one looks at electoral maps online, but again these images can change as votes are counted and corrections are made.