When the Founding Fathers of the United States were creating the government, they had to figure out a way to elect the President. A popular vote was considered, but representatives from smaller states thought that this would cause larger states to have more power and representation than the smaller states, and from this came the Electoral College.
The Electoral College is a system of the government where there are 538 electoral votes distributed to the various states based on population. States with large populations like California and Texas get lots of votes, and states with smaller populations, like Wyoming and Alaska get a lot less votres. By winning the majority in a state, the president-elect wins all of the electoral votes for that state, whether they win by millions or by a single vote. This way, the candidates are forced to consider the smaller states as well.
With this 538 vote system, you might think that all the votes are distributed equally. With 538 votes and 329.5 million people, each electoral vote should count for 329.5 million people divided by 538 ≈ 612,000 people per electoral vote. But that’s not how the electoral college works. Instead, states (and Washington D.C.) get two votes to start, and then the remaining votes are distributed amongst the states according to population. This means that states like Wyoming and Alaska would get only 1 vote if the 538 votes were distributed proportionally, but instead get 3 votes. Doing the math for California, we find that each electoral vote there counts for 718,364 people, but in Wyoming, each vote counts for 192,920 people. That means that a Wyomingites vote is worth over 3 times as much as a Californian's vote.
The whole point of the Electoral College is to make candidates pay attention to the smaller states. But the way the Electoral College is designed forces candidates to only pay attention to swing states, which are states that don’t tend to go one way or another in a political election. The other states that vote more reliably don’t matter to the candidates. The Electoral College is failing at the one job it was supposed to have.
That’s not all though. We know that people in smaller states are represented more than those in bigger states. By taking advantage of these and winning the majority by 1 vote in all but the 10 largest states, it’s possible to win 278 electoral votes (more than enough to win) and win only 23% of the popular vote. Although very unlikely, this cannot happen in a democracy. Candidates aren’t trying to win people, but states.
On 4 separate occasions has the popular vote not matched up with the electoral college. That’s around a 7% chance that this happens. What if in a sport, a spinner was spun, and 7% of the time, the loser would be declared the winner? It would be infuriating. Given that electing the president is much more important than basketball or football, this 7% is much too high.
All of these problems would go away if we switch to the popular vote. All adults’ votes are counted the same, candidates have to win people, not states, and the votes of people in all states are considered.
There is one more issue that people will have with a popular vote, and that is that the candidates would spend lots of time and money on big cities. Going down the list starting from New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago, once we get past the 10th biggest city, San Jose, we get to under a million people. Even if you go down further and add up the populations of the top 50 cities, it’s not even close to enough to win the popular vote. Candidates can’t just spend their time and money on flying from New York City to Phoenix to Los Angeles and win the vote. These are all the reasons why the electoral college doesn’t accomplish what it needs to. While the Founding Founders may have had good intentions about it, it simply does not work.
SOURCES:
“Distribution of Electoral Votes.” National Archives, 6 Mar. 2020, www.archives.gov/electoral-college/allocation.
ProCon.org. “Electoral College Pros and Cons - Top 3 Arguments For and Against.” ProCon.Org, 14 Apr. 2022, www.procon.org/headlines/electoral-college-pros-cons-procon-org.
Roos, Dave. “Why Was the Electoral College Created?” HISTORY, 2 Sept. 2021, www.history.com/news/electoral-college-founding-fathers-constitutional-convention.
“US States - Ranked by Population 2022.” World Population Review, worldpopulationreview.com/states. Accessed 27 Apr. 2022.
White, Marian. “Largest Cities in U.S. by Population.” Moving.Com, 26 Apr. 2022, www.moving.com/tips/the-top-10-largest-us-cities-by-population.