The U.S. Electoral College Trivia Quiz

Answer: 538

A candidate must have over half the electors in order to win. Half of 538 is 269. One more than that is 270, which is needed to win.

Answer: Al Gore

Gore barely edged out Bush in the popular, but Bush had a higher electoral vote.

Answer: First Monday following the second Wednesday in December

So the electors cast their ballots more than a month after the general population votes.

Answer: One elector who was pledged to vote for Gore abstained as a protest.

One elector from Washington D.C. abstained as a protest that D.C. is not represented in Congress. The final vote was Bush with 271, and Gore with 266.

Answer: All of the ones listed here.

All of the states that Bush won were critical for his victory. If he lost any of the 30 states that he had won, he would have lost the election. The fact that Florida was called last by the media is irrelevant. He had in fact won it the second that the polls closed.

Answer: Democrats and those living in large states.

Smaller states benefit from the electoral college. A voter in Wyoming has a much greater chance of affecting the election than a voter in California. Even though California has a huge amount of electoral votes, it also has a huge amount of voters. Proportionately, the states with low electoral votes are better off having the electoral college.

This favors states in the Rocky Mountains, Midwest, and Deep South, where the Democrats don't do so well. The Democrats are usually for gun control and welfare which turns off many voters in these states.

Answer: 1888-- Benjamin Harrison beat Grover Cleveland

President Cleveland came back four years later and won a second non-consecutive term. Many historians believe that the reason he lost in 1888 was that he promised economic reforms to southern states that turned off northern voters. Cleveland racked up huge numbers in the south but was crushed in the electoral college.

Answer: George Bush Sr.

This was a trick question. Al Gore did not win a majority of the popular vote. He didn't win more than 50 percent. In fact since 1844 when accurate records of popular votes were kept, 18 times a president has been elected without winning a majority of the popular vote.

They are: James Polk (1844), Zachary Taylor (1848), Franklin Pierce (1852), James Buchanan (1856), Abraham Lincoln (1860), Rutherford Hayes (1876), James Garfield (1880), Grover Cleveland (1884), Benjamin Harrison (1888), Grover Cleveland (1892), Woodrow Wilson (1912), Woodrow Wilson (1916), Harry Truman (1948), John F. Kennedy (1960), Richard Nixon (1968), Bill Clinton (1992), Bill Clinton (1996), and George W. Bush (2000).

This puts a serious kink in the plans of those who want to abolish the electoral college because oftentimes nobody even wins a majority of the popular vote.

Answer: California, New Jersey, New York, Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania

Bush only won three states with fifteen or more electoral votes (Texas, Ohio, and Florida).

Answer: Nebraska and Maine

48 states and D.C. operate under the "winner-take-all" method, which means that whoever wins the plurality of the vote in that state gets all of the electoral votes. Maine has 4 electoral votes, of which they give one to the winner of each congressional district that they have (which is two) and two for whoever wins the state. (Nebraska does the same thing but they have 5 electoral votes.) So in theory, Gore could have won 3 Maine electors, but Bush 1 if he led Gore in a particular district. Gore won all of Maine's 4 votes, though. Opponents of the electoral college like the split system because it seems to be more representative.

For example, California's 54 electoral votes went to Gore because he won the state, but in a split system, maybe Gore would get 30 and Bush 24 because that's closer to how the vote turned out proportionately.

The thing is though, if one state wants to change the way they do it, the other states are not bound to follow suit. This is why most states leave it the way that it is because they do not want their own electors to cancel each other out.

Answer: The number of House Members plus the number of Senators

Every state gets at least three because every state has at least one congressman plus two senators. D.C. automatically gets three as they don't have any senators.

Answer: Bush would win the election and have 7 more electoral votes than in 2000.

Bush would have more room for error this time around. Even if he were to lose one or two of the small states that he won in 2000, he could still win the election if he won the rest of the same states that he did.

Answer: One elector did not want James Monroe to sweep the electoral college.

The elector wanted George Washington to be the only president ever to be honored with a unanimous vote, so he voted for John Quincy Adams.

Answer: The electoral college increases the likelihood of messy recounts like we had in Florida in 2000.

Obviously, it is possible for a candidate to win the presidency even though they have less popular votes. Also, the electoral college does discourage third party candidates. (When was the last time you remember a third party getting any electoral votes?) But if for some reason a third party candidate does manage to get some electoral votes and no candidate has a majority, it could be thrown to the House of Representatives.

The one that is not a good argument is the recount one, because imagine what a mess we would have had if popular votes and not electoral votes counted. We would have recounts in every precinct in every state in the nation.

There would be pregnant chads everywhere!

Answer: Voters wanted to prevent someone like George Wallace from having a strong showing in the election.

George Wallace won several southern states on a platform that many considered racist. Fear spread that his states' rights platform could spread to more states than the south, even though the majority of Americans were opposed to his policies.

Answer: Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson had a higher popular vote count and a higher electoral vote count but lost the election of 1824 because there were four fairly even matched candidates and so Jackson did not have a majority. Therefore, the House decided the election and voted for John Quincy Adams. Jackson came back 4 years later and won.

Answer: 1876 - Rutherford Hayes vs. Samuel Tilden

There were two different slates of electors turned in for Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina. A huge constitutional crisis erupted and corruption and bargains allowed Hayes to be chosen president.

Answer: It's the economy, stupid

"It's the economy, stupid" refers to the 1992 campaign when people were upset about the way George H.W. Bush handled domestic affairs.

Answer: The candidate who came in second was declared vice-president.

Each elector cast one vote for president and one vote for vice-president. In 1800, Thomas Jefferson and his proposed running mate Aaron Burr each received the same number of votes. Then it had to go to the House but Burr refused to yield. He decided he wanted to be president. After numerous deadlocked votes, Jefferson finally won.

Answer: Two-thirds of the House must approve the plan, followed by two-thirds of the Senate, and three-fourths of the states.

Since the electoral college is in the Constitution, it would take a constitutional amendment in order to change it or repeal it. Over 700 proposed amendments to modify or abolish the electoral college have been offered to the House and some have even got the two-thirds vote to proceed before the Senate.

But they have all died in the Senate and they would be absolutely crushed by the states if they ever got that far. Since three-fourths of the states have to ratify the proposed amendment, this means that it takes only 13 states to kill it.

There are easily 13 states with small populations who do not want to give up the enormous power that they have. The electoral college is here to stay.