Every election season I tell myself that this is the year I am going to understand the electoral college. I am college educated but cannot figure out the electoral college. I resorted to watching the Schoolhouse Rock explanation with my 8-year-old son who is in third grade. We watched the cartoonish explanation, and he looked at me and said, “Huh?” I sheepishly shrugged in shared confusion.
Remember in 2000 when Gore won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote? That landed George Bush in the White House, and I just didn’t get it. I can’t seem to reconcile that outcome, and not because I didn’t vote for Bush. I cannot wrap my head around the system; it’s not the politics I’m fretting about. It’s the math.
We have 50 states plus the District of Columbia voting for President (never mind the United States citizens living abroad and in territories like Guam and Puerto Rico). Each state gets a minimum of three electoral votes. The total number of electoral votes is a simple formula of number of senators (2) plus number of House representatives (13 in my home state of North Carolina). This is where census data and Congressional districting come into play. There are 538 total electoral votes, and a candidate needs a simple majority to win (270). The mathematical reality is that the popular vote does not mirror the electoral vote, giving us the Gore/Bush situation of 2000. So the question begs to be asked, should popular majority vote rule? Should we abolish the electoral college?
I say no on both counts. But the truth is, I am confused enough that my opinion could be swayed here.
The electoral college is our country’s representative democracy, giving states equal representation. Basically, this was our founding fathers’ antidote to balance state power so one heavily populated state doesn’t control the election. One might argue that the system means that every vote doesn’t really count equally. In essence, an individual casts a vote for a candidate. That vote isn’t really for the candidate; it is for the electors to determine how they vote as a state. Technically, it is not the voters who elect a president, it is the electorate acting on behalf of the voters. But the catch is that there are no rules or laws or guidelines that require electors to vote based on how the citizens voted! Sure, that might not actually happen, but my point is that it can. This is my big beef with the electoral college that needs to be remedied.
I do fundamentally agree with the underlying premise of the electoral college, confusing as it is. The electoral college boils down to a numbers game. It is mathematical lunacy that ensures that every state is represented fairly based on population. While I did graduate from college (and graduate school), I didn’t major in math. Looks like yet another year of chasing the elusive electoral college.
Image via Gage (Wikimedia Commons)
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Comments 3
The Electoral College does not give states equal representation. Delaware has 3 electoral votes. California 55.
With the current state-by-state winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes, it could only take winning a bare plurality of popular votes in the 11 most populous states, containing 56% of the population of the United States, for a candidate to win the Presidency with a mere 26% of the nation's votes!
Presidential elections don't have to be this way.
The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
The National Popular Vote bill preserves the Electoral College and state control of elections. It changes the way electoral votes are awarded in the Electoral College. It ensures that every vote is equal, every voter will matter, in every state, in every presidential election, and the candidate with the most votes wins, as in virtually every other election in the country.
Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. No more distorting and divisive red and blue state maps. There would no longer be a handful of 'battleground' states where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in more than 3/4ths of the states that now are just 'spectators' and ignored after the primaries.
When the bill is enacted by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes- enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538), all the electoral votes from the enacting states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC.
In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). Support for a national popular vote is strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in virtually every state surveyed in recent polls in closely divided Battleground states: CO - 68%, FL - 78%, IA 75%, MI - 73%, MO - 70%, NH - 69%, NV - 72%, NM- 76%, NC - 74%, OH - 70%, PA - 78%, VA - 74%, and WI - 71%; in Small states (3 to 5 electoral votes): AK - 70%, DC - 76%, DE - 75%, ID - 77%, ME - 77%, MT - 72%, NE 74%, NH - 69%, NV - 72%, NM - 76%, OK - 81%, RI - 74%, SD - 71%, UT - 70%, VT - 75%, WV - 81%, and WY - 69%; in Southern and Border states: AR - 80%,, KY- 80%, MS - 77%, MO - 70%, NC - 74%, OK - 81%, SC - 71%, TN - 83%, VA - 74%, and WV - 81%; and in other states polled: AZ - 67%, CA - 70%, CT - 74%, MA - 73%, MN - 75%, NY - 79%, OR - 76%, and WA - 77%. Americans believe that the candidate who receives the most votes should win.
The National Popular Vote bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers in 21 small, medium, and large states. The bill has been enacted by 9 jurisdictions possessing 132 electoral votes - 49% of the 270 necessary to go into effect.
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