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) | a body of electors chosen by the voters in each state to elect the President and Vice President of the U.S. |
] | Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006. |
Electoral college
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| © 2008 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. |
E·lec·tor·al College
 Audio Help (ĭ-lěk'tər-əl) Pronunciation Key
n. A body of electors chosen to elect the President and Vice President of the United States. |
| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
| electoral college | |
noun | |
| the body of electors who formally elect the United States president and vice president |
| WordNet® 3.0, © 2006 by Princeton University. |
Electoral College [(i-lek-tuhr-uhl)]
The presidential electors who meet after the citizens vote for president and cast ballots for the president and vice president. Each state is granted the same number of electors as it has senators (see United States Senate) and representatives combined. These electors, rather than the public, actually elect the president and the vice president. The Founding Fathers assumed that electors would exercise discretion and not necessarily be bound by the popular vote, but the rise of political parties undermined this assumption. Electors are now pledged in advance to vote for the candidate of their party, and nearly always do so. Thus, the vote of the Electoral College is largely a formality.
Note: There have been several attempts to abolish the Electoral College. In the 2000 presidential election, the candidate with the plurality of popular votes lost the electoral vote, a situation that also occurred in the 1876 and 1888 elections.
[Chapter:] American Politics
| The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
Main Entry: elec·tor·al college
Function: noun
often cap E&C : a body of electors; specifically : the body of electors chosen from eachstate to elect the president and vice president of the U.S.
NOTE: Under Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, each state chooses electors in the same number that the state has senatorsand representatives. The electors have the discretion to choose the candidate they vote for, but in practice the electors vote for the candidate that wins the most votes in their respective states. Inall the states except Maine, the candidate that wins a plurality of the popular votes wins all of the state's electoral votes.
| Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law, © 1996 Merriam-Webster, Inc. |
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