The last time Americans voted for president was in 2016,
and they went for Hillary Clinton — by a margin of 3 million votes.
So how did Donald Trump, who finished second in that race,
become America’s 45th president?
Meet the Electoral College.
Every American has the right to vote and their votes do matter.
But in the presidential election, not every vote carries the same weight.
This is another episode in our series looking at "You vs. the System."
Today, we’re going to be looking at how the Electoral College was designed to dilute votes
and how it helps keep power in the hands of a white minority in the United States.
Unlike most countries that elect their leaders by some form of popular vote,
the indirect vote for president makes the U.S. a bit unique.
Let’s take a quick look at the breakdown.
There are technically two votes for the U.S. presidency:
The first is when Americans cast their ballots either by mail
or go to the polls on Election Day.
But, voters aren't actually casting ballots for a presidential candidate.
They're voting for electors, supplied by the candidate,
whose job it is to formally elect the president.
It's an indirect election for the president.
Fifty states plus the District of Columbia
are each assigned a number of electors —
delegates to the Electoral College.
Each state is allocated as many electors
as it has members of Congress,
including Washington, DC, which has three electors.
This means there are currently 538 electors
who make up the Electoral College.
Usually on election night, a projected winner is announced after Americans have cast their ballots.
But in mid-December,
these electors gather in their state
and cast their vote for the presidential candidate.
Most states require electors to award their vote
to the candidate who won the popular vote
in their particular state.
Maine and Nebraska are the only states
that divide electoral votes proportionally
according to which congressional districts
each candidate won.
But the other states award
all of their Electoral College seats to the candidate
that won the popular vote in their state.
And that is known as the “winner-take-all” method.
In order for a presidential candidate to win the White House,
they must receive a minimum of 270 electoral votes,
regardless of the outcome of the nationwide popular vote.
Now, the reason there can be a disconnect between the popular vote and the Electoral College
is because the number of people represented per electoral vote differs state by state.
For example:
In 2016, Wyoming had three electoral votes
and California had 55.
But Wyoming had about 584,000 people
compared to about 39 million Californians.
So even though California has a much larger population,
the weight of one Electoral College vote from Wyoming
carries almost 4 times the voting power
than one electoral vote from California.
So you can see that the possibility is there for a candidate to become president
even if they lose the popular vote, as long as they win the Electoral College.
And that has prompted many to complain that the system is fundamentally undemocratic,
because it structurally shrinks the value of many Americans’ votes.
At the same time, it boosts the value of the ballots cast by a minority of Americans.
So it probably doesn’t come as a surprise that, as we’re about to discover,
inequality is also connected to race.
The votes that matter less are people
like Black people in the South.
In order to better understand the problems with the Electoral College,
it’s important to know its origins.
The Electoral College was created in the 18th century,
when state delegates gathered in Philadelphia
to draft and sign the Constitution.
One of their key debates was over
how the president should be elected.
The Electoral College came about as a last-minute compromise.
Wilfred Codrington III is a law professor
with expertise in constitutional and election law.
He says the framers of the Constitution initially rejected the idea of the Electoral College.
They thought about a direct election for the president,
but many of the delegates at the convention were distrustful of the masses.
They thought about having Congress appoint the president.
Then they thought that would violate the "separation of powers" principle.
In the end, the Electoral College and these electors became
the least objectionable method for choosing the president.
One thing to point out is that when the idea of the popular vote was raised,
it was openly shut down because it would result in too much democracy.
Now, keep in mind:
The delegates drafting the Constitution were, in large part, white, wealthy slave owners.
So, “too much democracy” wouldn’t exactly be beneficial to their interests.
People want to look at the framers as the heroes of America at all times,
and downplay their big faults, and slavery and racism
and white supremacy being very big faults in history.
But we know that the Electoral College was one of these faults.
At the time, the North and South’s population
was almost equal,
but about a third of those living in the South
were enslaved and didn’t have the right to vote.
In fact, 93% of the country’s total enslaved population
was concentrated in just five Southern states.
This system incentivized the Southern states
to continue growing the number of slaves,
because the more slaves they had
the greater their power was in Congress and in the Electoral College.
Wilfred says that the preservation of slavery played a big role in how the system was designed.
While enslaved people couldn’t vote,
three out of five would still count towards a state’s population,
and help determine the number of members of Congress that the state got.
The small states get a little boost here because they get two senators, no matter what.
And therefore their representation is going to be a little bit inflated,
but the South gets a tremendous boost.
That slave bonus for electoral votes for the South
it actually increases the South's representation in Congress and in the Electoral College by 42%.
So, turns out the Electoral College has roots in slavery.
And many arguments used to justify the existence of the Electoral College are also falling short.
The problem here is that where we want to uphold the values of equality,
the Electoral College doesn't do that.
I will say that it distorts democracy.
The Electoral College is very much determined by a handful of swing states.
Swing states or battleground states have populations that are politically divided
and go back-and-forth between electing Democratic and Republican candidates.
Swing states usually get the most attention from campaigns —
that’s why you see politicians rushing to the Iowa State Fair to eat corn dogs and fried foods.
I think the best way to describe this, is a little slice of heaven.
Seventy to 75% of the country lives in states that are
reliably blue or reliably red.
Therefore, presidential candidates don't campaign in those places.
Instead, 90 to 95% of all the money that they spend in their campaign,
the visits that they make, that's only happening in a handful of states.
That's a problem because 70 to 75% of the country is sitting on the sidelines.
Wilfred says that voter turnout in swing states is also much higher.
For example, in 2012, voter turnout
in the 12 contested swing states was 16% higher
compared to the rest of the country.
In 2016, it was 11% higher.
Now, the Electoral College may not be suppressing votes...
but it sure is diluting them.
The worth of your vote is based on the accident of where you live.
Because it makes some votes count more in the race for the presidency than others.
If you live in a smaller state, your vote is worth a little more.
And many of those smaller states are not reflective of the country.
Critics say the Electoral College was designed to empower Southern whites,
and that it continues to do just that by weakening Black votes in the South.
This also amplifies white voters in that sense as well,
because those small states that get a boost are also more white than they are anything else.
More than half of our African American population lives in the South.
And they live in a bunch of states where they make up a sizable number of people,
yet their vote won't change the outcome because most of the people in that state vote the other way.
Out of the six states that have a Black population
of 25% or higher,
five have consistently voted Republican
in recent presidential elections.
But in the next five presidential elections,
there're expected demographic changes across the country,
which could play a bigger role in defining election outcomes.
For example, already in 2019,
the majority of Americans under the age of 16 are people of color.
Data also says that in about 25 years, non-Hispanic whites will be a minority in the U.S.
as the country continues to grow more racially and ethnically diverse.
There have been studies saying that, because of the demographic shifts,
the Electoral College goes one way, but the popular vote goes another way is much more likely now.
Changes in demographics matter because, some states are going to have fewer people as time goes on,
but they still have an outsized power through the way that the Electoral College is structured.
The Electoral College voting system has been in place for more than 200 years.
Since then, more than 700 proposals have been introduced
in Congress to reform or eliminate it all together.
In fact, it’s the subject that has gotten the most proposals for Constitutional amendments.
The only way you can get rid of the Electoral College is through a constitutional amendment.
And that is really hard to do.
It requires that you get a super majority of Congress and a super majority of states to agree to that.
Now, the chances of that happening are ... realistically speaking ... not great.
Just like the wealthy white men who wrote the Constitution
and were hesitant about too much democracy,
changes to the Electoral College today means those who benefit from it
will end up with diminished power.
Still, Wilfred believes that the ideal would be to get rid of the Electoral College anyway.
The only way to get a perfect reflection of what all Americans want
is to count all Americans' votes equally.
And that is a popular vote for the president.
But even with the Electoral College’s imperfections and disillusionment,
Wilfred wants to make sure voters know that their vote matters, regardless of the outcome.
First just the nature of a democracy.
The popular vote is important if, alone, it signals how much of a mandate a president has.
Second, it is theoretically possible that the presidential election
can be determined outside of the swing states.
Finally, and most importantly when you vote, it's not just for president.
You vote for all types of offices, federal officers, state officers, and local officers,
and winning in those offices dictates so much government policy.