3:00 P.M. EDT 
Real Audio of Briefing
MR. BRAZIER: Good afternoon. Welcome to the Washington Foreign Press Center, and welcome to our friends in New York as well. Today I have some bad news and I have some good news. The bad news is that if you think you understand the U.S. Electoral College completely, you are likely wrong. The good news is that you are not alone. As essential as it is to deciding who will lead the United States of America, our country's Electoral College, the intentions of its creators, its roots, its workings and its future too often seem a murky science.
So today, we are especially delighted to have with us Thomas Neale of the Congressional Research Service. With over 30 years of service at CRS and a portfolio focusing on America's government and Constitution, Thomas Neale has long studied and explained the U.S. Electoral College to a range of audiences, including the U.S. Congress.
We welcome his thoughts today. Tom.
MR. NEALE: Thank you very much. I'm pleased to be here this afternoon to talk about something that I call the "Sleeping Giant," and every four years, it either stirs in its slumbers or awakes with a growl. And I must also say, as a standard disclaimer, the views that I express this afternoon are my own and they should not be construed as being the official policy of the Congressional Research Service or the Library of Congress.
So having made the official disclaimer, let me say a few things about the Library -- or excuse me, about the Electoral College, and then I'd be happy to take your questions.
Every four years, attention focuses on the horse race, the national race, and it is. It is a national election, a presidential election, we choose our president. And we see a great deal of coverage of campaign stops, coverage on the horse race, the polls that show the person-to-person national numbers.
But there is an undercurrent, and it's usually discernible in this whole coverage, and that is that this election is -- as much as it is a national election, it is a federal election. It is decided in the 50 states, each acting as a discrete jurisdiction, and it is decided in a venerable -- or as you -- if you prefer, an archaic institution called the Electoral College.
One of the places we are more likely to -- most likely to see this is the coverage that you will have noticed of the battleground states, and I'll talk about those in a moment or two.
I think probably the best thing to do is frequently ask questions, and I'll answer them from here. And then, about the Electoral College, why do we have an Electoral College?
Like much of the United States Constitution, the Electoral College is a compromise, or was a compromise. The members of the Convention, which met in 1787, could not decide how to elect the president. Some wanted to elect the president in Congress. Others proposed that the state governors elect the president. Others proposed that members of Congress, drawn by lot, elect the president.
And one very courageous delegate named James Wilson of Pennsylvania said, "Why don't we let the people elect the president?" And his suggestion was looked on with disfavor by the vast majority of the delegates to the Convention.
And the reason for that was that America, at that point, was not a unified national society. We did not have a national politics, per se. The 13 states were largely discrete political organizations. There was very little in the way of communications, and aside from a single person, the indispensable man, George Washington, there were no figures, political figures, who commanded a national renown or confidence.
So having struggled with this question for four hot months in Philadelphia without air conditioning -- or screens, for that matter -- the Constitutional Convention settled on one of the many compromises. There are other compromises in the Constitution as well, one of which is the question of the Senate, equal representation in the Senate and population representation in the House. Another, of course, was the acceptance of slavery, which was a tragedy that was resolved only many years later.
Why did they agree to this system? Three reasons. It enhanced the separation of power, something they were very keen on, by taking election of the president away from Congress and preserving the president as an independent part of the government. It provided some advantage to these less populous states. A state like Rhode Island or New Hampshire was afraid of being overwhelmed by the giants of the day: Virginia, Pennsylvania, and later, New York. And also, here's a crucial point, it left it up to the states who would choose the electors. In other words, if a state wanted to have popular election for the electors, fine. If it wanted to take the process and put it in the hands of the legislature, also fine. And that was agreeable to everybody. So as a compromise, it passed.
I would note that the states still retain the option to change the way they choose their electors. And in fact, you'll recall from the year 2000, when there was a great discussion over the popular results in Florida, it was suggested that the state of Florida might take back its own power to distribute the electors in the final analysis. So that is still a live issue, one of many dealing with the Electoral College.
Now, a few more frequently asked questions, which you probably already know the answers to. How many electors are there? There are 538. And the electors include one for every senator, one for every U.S. representative, plus an extra three who represent Washington, D.C., the District of Columbia. The District of Columbia, as you know, does not having voting representation in Congress and is not in full control of its affairs, and until 1964, it did not even vote in presidential elections. It took an amendment to the Constitution to do that.
And the electors are allocated according to the total that each state has of its two senators and its representatives, the number of U.S. representatives. So the largest, most populous state, California, with 53 representatives and two senators, has 55 electors. That's an extraordinarily large portion of the Electoral College, twenty percent of what you need to elect the president.
The small states, of which there are seven -- Wyoming, Delaware, Alaska, both North and South Dakota, Montana, Vermont, and I may have skipped one or two here or there – like the District of Columbia, only have three electoral votes each, because they only have one member of Congress and two members of the Senate.
Who are these people? Who are the electors? Well, the Constitution says only one thing: the electors cannot be members of Congress -- remember, separation of powers -- and they cannot be anyone who has an office of trust or profit under the United States. In other words, I cannot serve as a presidential elector, because I'm a civil servant, and I dare say most of the people sitting around me who are also employees of the U.S. Government could not serve. But anyone else can.
In practice, who are they? They are state officeholders; state governors, in many cases, are nominated; party loyalists, party officials on the state level. And how does this whole nomination system work? Each party or other political group, such as Ralph Nader's Green Party, or independent candidacies, that gained a position on the ballot nominates what we call a "slate" of electors. This is a group candidacy. In California, the Democrats have nominated 55 people to be electors -- the Republicans, 55; the Nader people, 55. And when we vote, we vote for these tickets of electors as a group and we call that the "winner-take-all" system.
So each person goes to the polls and they case one vote. And if you're lucky, in some states, you will actually see in the voting device, "Electors for Bush/Cheney," "Electors for Kerry/Edwards," "Electors for Nader/LaDuke," that sort of thing, but you're actually voting for those electors.
How are the electors nominated? The parties do that in nearly every state. There are a few very, very strange exceptions, but the parties, either through their committees or their state party conventions, do the nominating. And once again, how do we finally come to elect the electors? People talk about electoral votes. But we do have -- these are real people, and they are elected, again, by what we call the "winner-take-all" or "general ticket" system. You case one vote, and that one vote elects the entire slate of electors for the party and the candidates of your choice.
Now, however, there are two exceptions to this rule, and, indeed, there may be a third that I will deal with in a few minutes. Since the Constitution says the states are free to choose the method of allocating their electors -- 48 states and the District of Columbia, as I've said, use the winner-take-all system -- two states, Maine and Nebraska, use a different system called the "district system." And what they do in this case is they count their votes twice in the state. And the overall state winner wins the two electoral votes that I mentioned earlier, correspondent to the two Senate seats. Remember, each state, no matter its population, gets two electoral votes corresponding to its Senate seat.
Then, Maine and Nebraska tally the votes by congressional district, and the winners in each congressional district win an additional electoral vote. So what that means, there is potential for a divided electoral vote, but just in those two states. And interestingly enough, in all the years that these -- that Maine and Nebraska have had this system, they have never split their votes.
How are the electoral votes cast? The electors meet on Monday after the second Wednesday in December, and the origins of that date back to colonial times. It just happened that way; take my word for it. It's been enshrined in history. That date falls on the 13th of December this year. That is the date the electors meet.
How do they meet? Interestingly enough, the Electoral College never meets in one place at one time, and there was a reason for this: because the founding fathers were afraid that if they did, they would get into scheming and caballing and plotting. So they said, "You will meet, but you will meet in separate places." In practice, this means they meet in their state capital. The Pennsylvania electors will meet in Harrisburg. The California electors will meet in Sacramento. The New York electors will have the supreme misfortune of meeting in Albany, one of the dullest cities in the country. (Laughter.)
So as they arrive, they usually go right to the state capital building. They cast their votes. They sign certificates and seal them up. Usually, the states treats them to a good lunch, and then they are on their way, and the Electoral College ceases to exist. It lasts for about two hours once every four years. It has no continuing existence.
The results are then sent, official results are then sent to the Vice President of the United States in his capacity as President of the Senate, they are sent to the archivist of the United States for inclusion in the National Archives, and they are sent to the United States District Court for the district in which the electors are meeting. So, for instance, the Washington, D.C. electors, obviously, the results are sent to the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C.
How are the votes then counted and certified? They are counted and certified, and the results are declared by Congress. Congress meets in a joint session, both House and Senate, just as if it were the State of the Union message or a foreign leader, such as the Iraqi Prime Minister addressing Congress. And the date for that is set at January 6th of 2005, January 6th every fourth year.
The Vice President presides, so if you followed the proceedings in the year 2001, you saw that Vice President Gore had the distinct displeasure of declaring his opponent elected President of the United States. He wasn't alone in that. Richard Nixon had the same problem in 1961; and in 1993, Dan Quayle had the pleasure or displeasure of declaring Bill Clinton and Al Gore elected President and Vice President of the United States.
Now, I'm sure that we're going to have questions, so I just want to draw your attention to the fact that there was coverage of the electoral count session and objections to electoral votes was raised by Michael Moore in his famous movie, 9/11. And feel free to ask me questions in a few minutes on that.
A few dates to remember. Again, November 2nd, Tuesday after the first Monday in November, general election day. There's a reason why it's Tuesday after the first Monday in November. If you are historically curious, ask me, I'll tell you.
December 13th, the date the electoral votes are cast. Six days before that is Safe Harbor Day. It's also this year, December 7th, which is Pearl Harbor Day. And that had a particular resonance in the year 2000, because no matter what the level of dispute within a state, if the state on that date, December 7th this year, makes the decision as to who won the electoral votes, using laws and procedures that it had enacted before the election, then challenges in the state on the state level must cease. So that's the Safe Harbor that you probably remember from the year 2000 if you were covering the election then. And as I say, it's Safe Harbor Day and Pearl Harbor Day.
And finally, January 6th, electoral votes counted, certified, and the election results are declared -- or maybe not. And in that case, proceed to an even more arcane form called "contingent election" and if you want to know about that, we can talk about it.
Things to watch for in 2004: the popular vote horse race. I've been looking at the polls. Gallup says at this point it's 49/49, dead even. Zogby, which generally tends to favor the Democratic candidates, gives Bush 46, 43 over Kerry. That was on the 4th of this month. CNN, Bush over Kerry by 49/47. Newsweek, Kerry over Bush, 49/46.
The Electoral College horse race, which is something we're probably more interested in, I checked three of the services that deal with that, and the best of these, for my money -- and this is not an endorsement -- but Professor Larry Sabato at the University of Virginia has an online service called Larry J. Sabato -- that's S-a-b-a-t-o -- "Sabato's Crystal Ball." And if you Google it, you can find it. He is one of the best handicappers of the Electoral College. He gives Bush a 284 to 254 lead at this point. And as you know, 270 is the majority of electoral votes needed to elect. Others, electionprojection.com, one word, gives Bush 295 to 243 for Kerry. Electoral-vote.com, 321 Bush to 200 Kerry, which is probably overly optimistic.
Other things to watch for are battleground states. What is a battleground state? Now, you automatically will probably suspect that it is a big state filled with electoral votes, and indeed, that is sometimes the case. But it can also be a small state which is closely contested, and in a close election such as we had in the year 2000, even very small states such as Arkansas, West Virginia, and New Hampshire, all of which George Bush won by a very small margin, and any one of which had he lost, he would have lost the presidency. Those are also battleground states.
So some of the obvious ones that we're looking at now in this election are Florida, which has 27 electoral votes -- and despite the fact that the Governor -- the President's brother is Governor, and the President looks up by about six percent in some of these, it's a very close race. Ohio, 20 electoral votes. Pennsylvania is another close one, 21. These are the big states, big blocks.
Michigan, 17. Lesser ones: Missouri, 11 electoral votes; Wisconsin, 10; Minnesota, 10. And even down to places like, once again, West Virginia is up. Nevada is up, primarily because of the nuclear waste question. The federal government wants to bury thousands and thousands of tons of nuclear waste in Nevada, and Nevada, which is otherwise reliably a Republican state is not very happy about that. Oddly enough, New Jersey, which has a big block of 15 electoral votes, is, as they say, in play. Kerry's up by about four percent. Bush has been showing surprising strength.
One other thing to watch for, and I can't emphasize this too much -- it's one of the most interesting developments in years -- the state of Colorado is one of those states in the union that allows the voters to pass laws and constitutional amendments on popular initiative. In other words, if the voters in the state propose a constitutional amendment or a law, and if sufficient number of voters sign petitions, this proposal will be placed on the ballot for general approval.
There's one now, and here's to remember, Colorado Amendment 36. Colorado Amendment 36 proposes to establish a proportional allocation of electoral votes in Colorado. And how does that different from the system that we use in 48 of the states, the winner-take-all system that I mentioned earlier? In the proportional system, it's exactly as it sounds. Colorado has nine electoral votes at this point -- if Bush gets two-thirds of the vote, which is very high, just for the sake of making it easier, under the winner-take-all system, he gets all nine electoral votes. Under the proportional system, he gets six and the other candidate gets three. Bush is up a few points at this point in Colorado. Now, the importance here is if this is a very tight election, the split in the Colorado election vote could decide it either way. If Colorado had had proportional allocation of electoral votes in the year 2000, Al Gore would be president today, and would be running for election.
Now, there's always some what-ifs and buts, but wait here. The question is, is the Colorado Amendment 36 constitutional? The U.S. Constitution says the legislature shall decide how the electoral votes are allocated, the state legislature. The question is, can the state legislature, or did the state legislature in Colorado have the power to, as we say, to subdelegate this authority to the election process itself? And if this initiative passes, and if it is retroactively applied to the election results for 2004, both of which is part of the proposal, then you can be sure that there will be a Florida-size political and legal dispute over it, particularly if it is a very close vote in the electoral vote.
A couple of other things. Faithless electors. We may have some faithless electors this time around. The Constitution is not entirely clear as to whether the electors have to obey the will of the people. Most constitutional scholars would say the electors can make their own choices, and in fact, a Republican candidate for the office of elector -- remember, we're talking about these tickets of electors – in West Virginia has said, well, I don't much care for what George Bush has done, and if I'm elected as an elector, I will not be voting for George Bush.
This has been a problem we faced in the past. There have been a sprinkling of faithless electors of the centuries, literally. Most recently, interestingly enough, in the District of Columbia in the year 2000, one of D.C. electors decided that she was going to protest the whole Florida process by not casting any vote. So there is one blank vote for the 2001 electoral vote tally. And there have been faithless ones in the past. In 1998, another West Virginia elector decided that -- and you'll recall the Democratic candidates that year were Michael Dukakis and Lloyd Bentsen. She thought Lloyd Bentsen was more presidential, so she cast her presidential ballot for Lloyd Benson, and her vice presidential ballot for Michael Dukakis.
So these things happen. And most scholars would say they have a right to do that, and the only time that any one of these faithless electors has been challenged in Congress during the electoral count session was an objection. The objection was not sustained, and the faithless elector's vote stood.
So finally, I think those are the things you need to know, the frequently asked questions and a few of the salient issues that we'll be facing with the Electoral College in 2004.
MR. BRAZIER: Thanks very much, Tom. By tradition, we will start with New York. I understand you have a question. If you would say your name and your journals, please.
QUESTION: Hi, my name is Pedro Ribeiro. I work for the Publica newspaper of Portugal. My question is about Colorado's proposed Amendment 36. Mostly, I would like to know, is there a chance that other states might follow suit if that amendment is successful? And if suddenly we have seven or eight states adopting the proportional method, how would it change the way that politicians or presidential candidates campaign in America?
And still on the Amendment 36, if it's approved, and if there is a chance that it might swing the election, what will be the legal procedure? I mean, will this go all the way to the Supreme Court again? Will it be discussed in the Colorado legislature? What will happen?
MR. NEALE: First, let me say, with respect to whether or not we'll have more Colorado Amendment 36's, it's too late for this election. Most of these have to be filed 30, 60, or 90 days [in advance of the election]. They have to receive the requisite number of signatures 30, 60, or 90 days before the election. Colorado Amendment 36 was certified I think on the 14th of August, well within the deadline. So we will not see anything else along those lines -- knock on wood -- this election season.
If the Colorado Amendment 36 is approved -- and I have seen different figures -- I saw one that was very close, 51-49, roughly, in favor, and another one that said it had a higher margin of approval. And incidentally, the Rocky Mountain News, which is the leading paper of record in the state of Colorado, has come out with a very strong editorial against Amendment 36. If, however, it is approved, the court challenge will be immediate and I suspect it will go very, very quickly to the Supreme Court because it's a matter of the Constitution. It's not so much a matter of state law. I think the state court -- and I can't speak as a lawyer on this -- the state court involvement will be minimal or non-existent. It will go right to the highest levels of the federal judiciary system.
MR. BRAZIER: Anyone here in Washington?
Here, please. Sorry, wait for the mike, if you would, please.
QUESTION: My name is Analya Cespedes. I'm with El Mercurio newspaper from Chile.
My question is, can we have a tie in the votes of the Electoral College, and what will happen then?
MR. NEALE: This is this even more arcane situation that I mentioned earlier, and we call it "contingent election" because, as you know, there are 538 electoral votes. It's entirely possible that 269 each could be cast. In that case, the election of the president goes to the House of Representatives, and the election of the vice president goes to the Senate.
And there is another very arcane part of it. The election -- in the election of the president, each state casts one vote. And how do we attain those votes in the House of Representatives? The state delegations -- we haven't done this in 180 years, you have to realize this; 1825 was the last time there was a contingent election of the president, in which John Quincy Adams was -- who -- it's interesting because John Quincy Adams was the son of a president, just as George W. Bush is the son of George H.W. Bush. John Quincy Adams was elected by a contingent election in 1825 over Andrew Jackson, even though he won fewer electoral and popular votes.
But in this case, the state delegations, let's take for instance again, using the California delegation, all 53 of them would meet and they would vote individually and the State of California would cast one vote. Similarly, similarly, the Congressman representing the state of Wyoming would sit down by himself and think about it for a few minutes and then he would cast one vote.
What is the break? Now, assuming party -- and this is a big assumption, big what-if -- assuming party loyalty holds, the Republicans have a commanding lead in the number of state delegations they control in the House of Representatives at this point. They control 29 out of 50. The Democrats control 16, 4 are split down the middle, and one is the state of Vermont, Congressman Sanders, who is an independent, who usually votes with -- well, 90 percent of the time, votes with the Democrats.
So the Republicans have a big advantage in this case. But, but, again, let's say that if party loyalty -- that party loyalty is not absolutely 100 percent, it can be argued in a contingent election. But let's say, okay, they're both tied, but candidate B received 2 million more popular votes than candidate A. How can you not elect candidate B, who is so obviously the choice of the people, notwithstanding the fact that he only received, or she only received half of the electoral votes?
So there are competing -- aside from the assumption of party -- of rigid party discipline and loyalty, there would be other competing factors. Incidentally, the other time -- we've done a contingent election twice in our country's history. The first time in 1801, it took 34 ballots and it went on for weeks to elect Thomas Jefferson. And that was due to a malfunction in the original system, which is so arcane that I'm not even going to attempt to explain it to you.
MODERATOR: Anyone else?
QUESTION: May I?
MODERATOR: Yeah.
QUESTION: Paul Denig, Foreign Press Center.
Which houses of Congress in a contingency election would vote for the president and vice president, the current ones or the newly-elected ones?
MR. NEALE: Thank you, Paul, and that also gives me a chance to fill in something I missed. It would not be the Lame Duck Congress. It would be the new Congress, and that was deliberate on the part of the framers of the 20th Amendment, which came into effect in 1937. The new Congress meets on January 3rd, 2005. The electoral votes are counted, as I mentioned, on January 6th, 2005.
And again, to retrace my steps here on the contingent election process, I was concentrating on the president. The vice president is elected in the Senate, by the way, and each senator, unlike -- you still have equality of the vote among the states, but each senator casts a single vote, rather than each state, although the effect is the same. And the last time we did that was 1837.
MR. BRAZIER: Questions. New York?
QUESTION: Yes, sir, I have a question here. My name is Neeme Raud. I'm from Estonia newspaper, Postimees.
You have used the word "arcane" a couple of times. We remember the last elections, 2000 elections, Al Gore had half million more votes; people said it's unfair that Bush won. Do you think this electorate system will stay forever in the United States? Could it change ever?
MR. NEALE: My comment on that has been, for as long as I've covered this issue, which goes back many, many, many years, I always assumed that if there were what we call a "misfire" -- in other words, an election, a presidential election in which one candidate wins more electoral votes but fewer popular votes -- if we ever had a misfire, then there would be a powerful impetus for change, and this is exactly what happened in the year 2000. And it was the first time it had happened since 1888, so we had gone 112 years.
Much to my surprise, I must say, there was not a very strong effort to reform or eliminate the Electoral College following the election of 2000. What there was, however, as I think you will all recall, there was the Help America Vote Act of 2002, which addressed the question of election administration in the states, which is, as you know, largely a state function, and it dealt with the famous or infamous hanging chads.
And the federal government, the United States Government, intervened for the first time in the mechanics of election administration, aside from civil rights questions, to prescribe that certain standards would need to be met by the states in the methods and technologies they use to count and record votes and that there would also be, in order to sweeten the pot a little so the states wouldn't complain so much, there were several billions of dollars that was allocated to help the states upgrade their vote counting technology.
So this is where the energy went following the 2000 election. If it were to happen a second time, who knows? I always say that -- you know, I said that for so many years; I was surprised it didn't happen.
MR. BRAZIER: Yes, please, here in the middle.
QUESTION: Edith Gruenwald, Austrian Press Agency.
I have a kind of follow-up question to this. How would or should this be done, a reform of the election systems in a way that their outcome, the president, reflect more the will of the popular vote than of this electoral system? Would this have to be done in the Congress with reform of the Constitution, a constitutional amendment, or on each state level, or like in Colorado, but not with a referendum with lawmakers? Or could you elaborate on this please?
MR. NEALE: It would require on a national level a constitutional amendment. What the states can do is change the way the votes are allocated from the winner-take-all system to the proportional system or the district system, but they cannot eliminate electors, per se. The Electoral College system would require a constitutional amendment to change it.
The primary most widely advocated proposal for reform is direct popular election, and most versions of direct popular -- I point -- I call that sometimes -- you know, Isaiah Berlin famously pointed out that the fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing. And proponents of direct popular election -- rightly, I suppose -- argue, "I know one big thing: direct popular election will guarantee that the person who has the most votes wins the presidency."
The proponents either of the Electoral College as it currently exists or as it might be reformed are the foxes and they know many things. They say federalism, the U.S. Senate, a stable, moderate political party system, and so on, and so on, avoiding extremist parties of the right or left.
So you have to choose between those. But the direct popular election system is the most widely urged reform which -- and there is a footnote here that would say that most direct popular election proposals that have been offered in Congress would provide that in the event no candidate won a threshold of 40 percent plurality of the vote, then there would be a second round, very much like in the French system, except the French system, as you know, calls for 50 percent, a 50 percent majority requirement, rather than a 40 percent plurality requirement.
Other proposals to reform the Electoral College all share one, at least one feature, and that is they would eliminate the office of elector and retain electoral votes. So no faithless electors. And they would either -- essentially, there are three primary plans: establish the winner-take-all system in the Constitution, establish the district system in the Constitution, or establish a proportional system in the Constitution.
So those are the ones that have been offered. There are a few hybrids that have come along but haven't received much attention.
MR. BRAZIER: Question. We have another one. Yes, fine, Paul.
QUESTION: Paul Denig, again.
Does the Colorado referendum propose a proportional system or a district system?
MR. NEALE: Proportional system, proportional system. And not to delve too deeply into the technicalities of it, it proposes a rounded proportional system. Many of the suggestions for proportional system would carry out the electoral vote allocation to the third decimal place, except you would need a constitutional amendment to do that because the Constitution does not envision divided electoral votes, only whole electoral votes.
MR. BRAZIER: Yes, in the back, please.
QUESTION: Given the problems that has --
MR. BRAZIER: Would you say your name please?
QUESTION: Yes, I'm Ignasi Abad from Catalonia Radio, Spain.
Given that the problems that was -- that were in the past election in Florida, do you expect more controversies here, or do you think the system has (inaudible) if that doesn't happen again?
MR. NEALE: From the standpoint of what was the driving force behind the Florida controversy, which was election technology, voting technology, I would have to say that we may see some controversy over that again, that particular part, simply because the states are experimenting with new systems, computerized systems, electronic systems, which are -- which their technicians and their elections workers are not familiar with.
There have been questions as -- also, as to whether some of these online voting systems are subject to corruption in the sense of being hacked into and having the results changed. There have been -- in some of the primary elections this past year, there have been instances of that. I suspect we'll get some talk about that.
There are other questions here, too, that were -- that are being raised. These are what we call "hearty perennials" in the question of, for instance, of voting by convicted felons, whether -- which has been historically a state responsibility, and now, of course, we have reports that the state contracted out in Florida to a private firm that was rather too zealous in deleting people who had served -- were convicted felons.
Also, questions that are raised about whether or not there have been attempts to depress minority vote turnout. I think we are starting to see these now, and we will see them again.
Close elections within the states -- I don't see any states right now that are as close as Florida was in the year 2000. That certainly could happen again. For my own piece of mind and my own bedtime on the evening on November 2nd or November 3rd, I hope that the race is decided -- decided decisively, one way or the other.
MR. BRAZIER: Tom, if I could ask, which states picked up electors since the last election, and how does that -- how could that play out?
MR. NEALE: Generally, the states -- as you know, we reallocate the electoral vote every 10 years following the census because the House of Representatives, which is frozen by law, but not by Constitution, at 435 members, means that we have a limited universe. So we do reallocate those votes every 10 years and that the House -- the size of the House -- and that changes the size of the Electoral College delegations.
And, you know, I've been dealing with this so long, I don't think I have the exact list. But California picked up a seat. Florida picked up at least three seats. I'll read you some of the winners here, and they're all sunbelt states, by the way. It's the Northeast and Midwest. For instance, when I -- I'm a native New Yorker and from upstate New York. When I was a boy, New York state had 45 electoral votes. New York now has 31 electoral votes.
So you can see with the change of population in the United States from the Northeast and Midwest, what is unkindly and unfairly, I suppose, called the rustbelt, to the sunbelt states, the balance of electoral vote power has shifted dramatically.
California picked up about -- they're at 55; and Florida picked up about three at 27; Georgia picked up several; Texas is now the second most -- second state with the most electoral votes at 34. And they're pretty much -- they're also throughout the Southwest say, for instance, Nevada now has five electoral votes. They used to have three, not too long ago. There you have it. There is the Las Vegas phenomenon -- Arizona and, pretty much, the sunbelt states; Colorado seems to be picking one up every 10 years. So the balance of electoral vote power has shifted rather decisively.
MR. BRAZIER: Any other questions? I see someone in New York there.
QUESTION: Yes, if you could go back to the responsibilities electors have. You said, some of them can vote how they wish. You say that it's the college that comes in for two hours every four years and then they leave. How can people trust them when you really don't -- they have a right to change their mind in the last moment? Can they be punished if they have such a record?
MR. NEALE: Actually, it's an interesting question because well over about 22 of the states do seek to bind their electors, one way or another. They extract pledges from them. They threaten them with fines. Some of them threaten them with criminal penalties. But again, the vast balance of preponderance of constitutional scholars on this question say that the electors remain free agents. They may vote for whomever they choose.
But, once again, your elector candidates, your electors, are party loyalists, almost invariably. For instance, I would -- in the state of Pennsylvania, I would guarantee that the head of the list on the Democratic state elector ticket is Governor Ed Rendell, the Democratic governor of the state. And the state party leaders, occasionally, some nice person who has been working as an election clerk and for 50 years in some county somewhere in the state is made an elector candidate as recognition for all the work that this person has done.
The electors tend, by and large, to be a pretty loyal bunch of party workers and people and office holders, but that's not to say that they can't exercise their own judgment if they choose.
MR. BRAZIER: All right. On behalf of the Foreign Press Center, thank you, Tom. That was an excellent presentation. And to our friends in New York, thank you, as well. Good evening.
