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Electoral College WorksheetThe Election of a President is NOT determined by which candidate gets the greatest number of votes. If so, Hilary Clinton would be President today rather than Donald J. Trump. Clinton received about 2,000,000 more POPULAR votes, but Trump got the most ELECTORAL VOTES to become President. President. This work sheet is designed to help you understand why Trump won rather than Clinton. Hopefully, you will soon know the process by which we select our President. Let’s suppose that there are only 5 states: CALIFORNIA, NEW YORK, TEXAS, FLORIDA, and TENNESSEE. Let’s also suppose that the election has already taken place and all votes have been counted. The following table gives you the total number of votes accumulated for each candidate.by state. STATE BIDENTRUMPCalifornia6,000,000 votes3,000,000 votesNew York4,000,0003,000,000Texas4,000,0005,000,000Florida4,000,0005,000,000Tennessee1,000,0002,000,000POPULAR VOTE TOTALS ______________ _______________But the POPULAR VOTE does NOT determine the winner of the election. The ELECTORAL VOTE is used to name a new President. The U.S. CONSTITUTION is clear about how to determine the number of ELECTORAL votes to which each state is entitled. Just ADD the number of REPRESENTATIVES each state has in the U.S. CONGRESS to the number of its SENATORS to determine the number of ELECTORAL VOTES assigned to each state.**Example: Tennessee has 9 Representatives to Congress along with 2 Senators. Therefore, add 9 + 2 to get Tennessee’s ELECTORAL VOTE total.**All states have TWO (2) SENATORS. However, the number of REPRESENTATIVES varies from state to state. States with large populations have more Representatives than small states. So, the more people that live in a state, the more ELECTORAL votes that state will have.Turn to the back of this page to calculate the ELECTORAL VOTES for the 5 states in this fictional election.ELECTORAL VOTES ASSIGNED FOR EACH STATEState # Senators +# Representatives =# of Electoral VotesCalifornia 2 58 ________New York ________ 42 ________Texas 2 ________ 50 Florida ________ ________ 49Tennessee 2 9 11The Candidate that gets the most POPULAR votes in each state gets ALL of that state’s ELECTORAL VOTES.Now record the number of electoral votes won by each candidate in this fictional election. Remember that the winner in each state gets all of the ELECTORAL VOTES while the other candidate gets 0!State # of Electoral Votes Electoral Votes won Electoral Votes womCalifornia ________ Biden ________Trump ________New York ________ Biden ________ Trump ________Texas ________ Biden ________ Trump ________Florida ________ Biden ________ Trump ________Tennessee ________ Biden ________ Trump ________TOTAL ELECTORAL VOTES WON: BIDEN ________TRUMP ________WHICH CANDIDATE WOULD BECOME OUR NEXT PRESIDENT? _________________________QUESTIONS1. Who would become the newly elected President as a result of this fictional election?2. Do you think it fair that the candidate who received the most POPULAR votes actually lost the election?3. In your opinion, is it fair that California has more than 5 times the number of ELECTORAL VOTES than Tennessee? 4. Write your thoughts on why the FOUNDERS who created our Constitution chose to use the ELECTORAL VOTE rather than the POPULAR VOTE to select our Presidents? Read the information contained on the following page.On November 3, 2020, American voters will select our next President. For those Americans who care about such things, watching televised election coverage is most interesting and sometimes tense when results are close. Below are some bits of information that will help you understand what you are seeing if you should choose to watch election night coverage on November 3. As in the fictional election above, the winner of the real 2020 Election will NOT necessarily be the candidate who gets the most ‘popular’ votes. The winner will be the candidate who wins a minimum of 270 ELECTORAL VOTES. Why 270?Each state has a predetermined number of Electoral Votes. In total there are 538 Electoral votes. (There are 435 representatives to Congress, 100 Senators, plus D.C. gets 3 Electoral votes.)According to the Constitution the winner of a Presidential election must get more than half the available Electoral votes. When 435, 100, and 3 are added the total is 538. Half of 538 is 269. But to win, a candidate must get more than half. Therefore, a minimum of 270 Electoral votes are required to win a Presidential election. Electoral votes are awarded to the candidate who wins the most votes in each individual state. So, rather than looking at the grand total of votes (the popular vote) received by each candidate, it is much more important to look at vote totals in each of the individual statesOn election night, when a significant number of votes have been counted, commentators on TV will announce that a candidate has won a particular state. Let’s say that Joe Biden has an insurmountable lead in New York. On an interactive map of the United States, New York will then be colored BLUE. A few minutes later Trump is declared the winner in South Carolina—in which case S.C. will be colored RED. So when they are talking about a state being BLUE, they actually mean that it has voted for DEMOCRATS…OR…RED meaning that a state has voted REPUBLICAN. Keep in mind that because of differences in TIME ZONES, vote totals always come in EARLIER from states on the East Coast as opposed to states in the west. Usually, it will be very late before election results for far western states are known. This year results may NOT be known as soon as we would like because of the huge number of mail in ballots being cast. ................
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