United States Electoral College

High school (ages 12+)
People & Society

Name:

Date:

Step 1 · Read the article

Open the article and read it at the level above. Then answer the questions below in your own words.

https://smallwhale.org/articles/united-states-electoral-college

Write what each word means, using the article.

Do not copy the article. Write two things you learned, the way you would explain them to a friend.

Answers below are taken from the article’s stored facts, so they match what the student read.

1. What is the minimum electors per state?3 (2 Senators + at least 1 Representative)
2. What is the presidential elections won by popular vote runner-up?5 (1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, 2016)
3. What is the Electoral College?The Electoral College is a special group of people chosen to pick the President. They are selected by each state based on its number of senators and representatives. The total number of electors is 538.
4. Why did the Founding Fathers create the Electoral College?They wanted a way to choose the President that was fair for both big and small states. They also worried that people might not know enough about voting and that a national vote would be hard to organize in the 1700s.

Constitutional Convention: The 1787 meeting where delegates drafted the U.S. Constitution.
Winner-Take-All System: A method where the candidate with the most votes in a state receives all of its electoral votes.
National Popular Vote Interstate Compact: An agreement among states to award electoral votes to the national popular vote winner.