by Tissa Jayatilaka

(This article is based on a talk given to the members of the Sri Lanka Foreign Service Association on the 10th of December, 2024).

I was invited to address you today on the topic of what the second coming of Donald Trump, as President of the United States holds for the United States and the wider world outside of its shores. I was also requested to explain to you the Electoral College process by which a president is elected in the United States. This is a process that baffles even those familiar with the United States and the way its institutions function, as it is markedly different from the way in which other democracies elect their presidents and prime ministers.

I shall try my very best to not confuse you in my attempt to explain the manner in which the POTUS, to use the abbreviation for the President of the United States first used by telegraphic code operators in the 1890s, is elected.

I shall focus, initially, on the second part of my assignment and get it out of the way as soon as possible. That is, I will attempt to explain the US Electoral College process first and then deal with the more fraught and the more alarming first part – which is to deal with the likely consequences that would stem from the return of Donald Trump to 1600, Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, District of Columbia – the White House.

In the United States, the Electoral College is the group of presidential electors that is formed every four years during the presidential election for the sole purpose of voting for the President and Vice President. How this election should be held is described in Article 11 of the Constitution of the United States which says:

Each state shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States shall be appointed an Elector.

The 23rd Amendment to the Constitution ratified in 1961, allowed the citizens of the District of Columbia to participate in presidential elections as well: The District constituting the seat of Government of the United States which is treated like a state has consistently had three (3) electors.

As stipulated by the Constitution, every state has a number of electors or members of the Electoral College equal to its number of senators and members of the House of Representatives. Each of the 50 states of the United States, regardless of its size and population, has two senators. The number of members of the House for each state depends on the population of that state. Hence, smaller the population of a state, smaller will be the number of members of the House it is entitled to. Conversely, the bigger states are entitled to a bigger number of House members. So, if we take Oregon as an example, with its six House members and two senators, the state has eight electors, Montana with two House members and two senators has four electors, while California, with a far bigger population than both Oregon and Montana, has 52 members of the House and two senators, which entitles it to 54 electors.

Besides California, Texas, Florida, and New York have the highest number of electoral votes. Except for Nebraska and Maine, 48 of the 50 states in the US and the District of Columbia use a winner-take-all system, awarding all of their electoral votes to the popular vote winner. The Electoral College system also means a candidate can win the election without winning the popular vote, as seen in Donald Trump’s 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton who won 2.8 million more votes than Trump.

One major criticism of the winner-take-all system is that the candidate who receives a majority of the popular vote in a given state gets all of that state’s electoral votes. Let us take Oregon again as an example. As we noted earlier, Oregon has eight electors. If a candidate wins Oregon, even by one vote, he/she gets all eight of its Electoral College votes.

Critics of the winner-take-all system think it is undemocratic for a winner of the popular vote of a state, to get all of that state’s Electoral College votes. Bruce Lohof, a valued friend, congenial colleague and former United States Foreign Service Officer, in an article titled What Must the Other Democracies Think? compares US democracy with fellow democracies and observes:

But how is it that in the 21st century, a Montana Elector represents only 282,000 Montanans while a California Elector represents 720,000 Californians. Worse, how is it that the candidate who receives a majority of Montana’s – or California’s – popular vote gets ALL of the state’s Electoral College votes? Shouldn’t voters be represented equally? And shouldn’t candidates who get, say, 55% of the popular vote, get 55% of the electoral vote? Why do they get to clear the table, poker style?

On five occasions, including two of the last six elections, candidates have won the Electoral College, and thereby the presidency, despite losing the nationwide popular vote. The Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022 addresses some of the shortcomings in the Electoral College process but not all of them. There are those Americans who argue for the dismantling of the Electoral College. According to a September 2024 report of the Pew Research Centre, 63 percent of Americans support the abolition of the Electoral College. According to the US National Archives, public opinion polls have shown that Americans favoured abolishing the Electoral College by majorities of 58% in 1967; 81% in 1968; and 75% in 1981.

The United States came close to abolishing the Electoral College when the late Democratic Senator Birch Bayh (Indiana) led an attempt to amend the Constitution in September 1969 in order to do so. The House voted 339 to 70 in support of the measure. However, led by the Southern senators and helped by extremely conservative Midwestern Republicans, the proposal was defeated in a filibuster.

Be the above criticisms and observations as they may, what we know is that during a presidential election, a citizen does not vote, odd as it may sound, directly for the president, but for a slate of electors pledged to vote for one or the other candidate. In the months leading up to the presidential election held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November, the political parties in each state typically nominate their own slates of would-be-electors. The state’s popular vote determines which party’s slate would be made the eventual electors.

In total, the Electoral College comprises 538 members (made up of two senators for each of the 50 states =100 + 435 members of the House of Representatives from all of the 50 states and three from the District of Columbia). A presidential candidate must win a majority of the Electoral votes cast to win – that is, at least 270 if all the 538 electors vote.

Members of the Electoral College meet and vote in their respective states on the Monday, after the second Wednesday after election day. Then, on 6 January, a joint session of Congress meets at the Capitol to count the votes and declare the outcome of the election, paving the way for the Presidential inauguration on 20 January.

We must bear in mind that the Electoral College is neither a place nor a permanent body. As I stated at the beginning, it is only a process and also as noted above, in each state, political parties designate their slate of potential electors well before the November presidential election. The Electoral College of 2028 will most likely be different from that which elected the President of 2024.

Now, for the second part of my presentation today. What are we to expect from the 47th President of the United States once he is inaugurated on 20 January, 2025? Crystal ball gazing or trying to forecast anything about the future as I plan to do in the next several minutes is, to say the least, a colossal undertaking, especially so when attempting to predict what an unpredictable man, such as Donald Trump, would do once he is back in the saddle as President. In addition to all of the foregoing I must confess that I strongly dislike Donald Trump, the man who is more flawed than most of his predecessors. And this fact makes a dispassionate assessment of him and what his second term might be like, an enormous challenge. Subject to these caveats, let me chance my arm. And I take heart from a comment made by the well-known journalist David Brooks in his recent piece in the Atlantic titled How America got so mean in which he says:

America became a place where 74 (sic) million people looked at Trump’s morality and saw Presidential timber.

It has been said that there is no Republican Party any more, only a Trump Party. And this distorts everything. The Republicans have signalled that they will render complete loyalty to the agenda of their leader. Troy Nehls, a sycophantic, Republican congressman from Texas recently said of the President elect:

He’s got a mission statement, and his goals and objectives, we need to embrace it (sic). All of it. If Donald Trump says jump three feet high and scratch your head, we all jump three feet high and scratch our heads.

If Nehls’ language is extreme, the sentiment behind it, is not. Many Republicans have vowed nearly unquestioned support for Trump’s policies and decisions. Many invoke what they call Trump’s mandate to justify their unwavering support, the kind of rationale normally reserved for a large electoral victory. Yet Trump did not actually win in a landslide. According to available statistics, Trump won less than 50% of the popular vote, beating Kamala Harris by a mere 1.6 points. That is, the smallest margin of victory in a US Presidential Election since 1888!

Trump’s picks for his Cabinet to-date and to other major positions leave much to be desired. Not only are most of them seriously unqualified but are uncouth and allegedly guilty of criminal conduct. Matt Gaetz, Trump’s former nominee for Attorney General, who consequently withdrew his candidacy, is a good illustration of the foregoing. A Trump loyalist with little legal experience, he has been investigated by the House Ethics Committee over allegations that he may have “engaged in sexual misconduct and illegal drug use, accepted improper gifts, dispensed special privileges and favours to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship, and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct”.

(To be continued)