Nov. 3, 2024
By Jacob Collins Dodd
Staff Writer
This article is part of a five-part in-depth reporting project about the 2024 presidential election.
In the 2016 presidential election, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 2.9 million votes but lost because of raw votes in the Electoral College. According to the Washington Post, it was the largest popular-vote lead in history for a candidate who lost the election. This exposes a significant problem in the electoral process: when individual votes do not equate to electoral victory, their value diminishes.
The Electoral College is a political process established in the Constitution. It is used to elect the president and vice president. Instead of electing based on the popular vote, voters in each state cast their ballots for a slate of electors, who then choose the president. There are 538 electors, and a candidate must garner 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.
When the founders conceived the Electoral College, they did so to create a balance of power, more thoroughly incorporate the views of smaller states, restrain mob rule and preserve a European concept whereby emperors were selected by electors, according to the Missouri Independent.
If all American adults voted, a vote in Wyoming would be worth almost four times as much as one in California, according to the Washington Post.
Alas, it was also created to give slaveholding states more influence in elections. This bolstered their political power even as they denied enslaved populations the right to vote, according to a blog posted on Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government website. Today, 12 of these 15 original slaveholding states are Republican strongholds.
By offering excessive representation to voters in Republican states, the Electoral College continually disenfranchises voters in Democratic states. This system undermines the popular vote and distorts the incentives of voting in the first place.
The Electoral College also gives more weight to voters in less populous states. In the 2016 presidential election, California was the most misrepresented state in the Electoral College, according to the Washington Post. If all American adults voted, a vote in Wyoming would be worth almost four times as much as one in California, according to the Washington Post. The state is home to 12% of Americans but holds only 10% of electoral votes.
ILLUSTRATION BY ALEX SKOWRONSKI The Electoral College benefits the Republican Party, while diminishing the voices of Democratic voters.
Abolishing the Electoral College would require a constitutional amendment, which would develop from House or Senate joint resolutions. The proposed amendment would also require ratification by three-fourths of the states, according to Article V of the Constitution, which would be extremely difficult considering that many states are intent on suppressing voters to impact the makeup of the Electoral College.
While it can be argued that the Electoral College helps ensure undeniable election results, the negatives outweigh the positives.
More than six in 10 Americans want to move away from the Electoral College, according to findings by the Pew Research Center published in September. Americans deserve a political process that values and incentivizes the individual vote.
The Electoral College, as it stands, fails to represent Americans. In a nation that prides itself on equality, freedom and liberty, this is unacceptable.
