Every four years, the American people are thrust into a visible and very noisy process of debate about who should serve as the President of the United States. In our electoral democracy, no election receives the level of attention and scrutiny as much as the American people’s choice for President.

And yet we the people do not choose our President.

Yes, the media lead us to believe that we elect the President. Throughout the presidential election year, you will hear time and time again how important it is that you vote for President. With that constant drumbeat, it is not surprising that most Americans believe that when they vote in November, at the top of the ballot they will be making a selection for one presidential candidate over the others.

And when they look at their ballot, it gives them that impression, because the names of the presidential candidates who qualified for the ballot in their state appear, with a box next to each one.

But look more closely. Next to the name of each candidate should appear, probably in small type, a list of several other names. At least 3, and as many as 55, depending upon what state you are voting in. That is because when you are checking the box next to your preferred candidate’s name, in fact what you are selecting is all of the names (as a group) in small type, not the candidate himself.

So who are those people listed in small type?

Those are people from your state who have pledged to vote for the same candidate you are selecting. In other words, they themselves are candidates. In fact, they are the real candidates. They are candidates for membership in the Electoral College. And if they are elected, they have said they will vote for the candidate they are associated with on your ballot. (Sort of. Actually, they might change their minds, but more on that later).

Therefore, as a citizen who voted in the quadrennial election for President, it is important to understand that what you are really doing every four years is voting for a group of Electors from your state, not the presidential candidate herself.

 

Why Do We Vote for Electors?

You may be asking: when did we start doing this? And why do we vote for members of the Electoral College, not the actual candidate for president?

The fact is that we have always done it this way. When the Founders who wrote the original U.S. Constitution in 1787 gathered in Philadelphia to design a new national government, this is what they came up with as the way to choose the President of the United States. And we have been doing it pretty much the same way ever since.

If this is surprising to you, keep in mind some important facts about the Founding Fathers and the U.S. Constitution. 
Today, we like to believe that we are a democracy and that we were founded as a democracy in defiance of the King of England. There is a kernel of truth in this democratic ideal for sure. It is true that we didn’t believe in the divine right of kings. The Founding Fathers, who fought a revolution for independence from a royal system of government, did believe in the idea that government springs from the people, not from kings and queens.

But that is not the same thing as saying you believe that all citizens, no matter who they are or what they believe, should be making every decision in a democracy. In fact, the reason that the Founding Fathers were gathering in Philadelphia in the first place is that they were concerned that “too much democracy” was breaking out in some of the states, and that a strong national government was needed to keep those democratic passions from breaking down into anarchy.
The point is that our modern notion of democracy, which holds much faith in the rights, abilities and responsibilities of average people to make decisions about their own government, was not the same notion believed by most of the Founding Fathers. There were differences of opinion among them, to be sure. Some of them had more faith in average people than others. But in general, as a group, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 were much more concerned about designing a new national government that moderated the extremes of democracy, and balanced them with the involvement of the “wisest” among those citizens as decision makers and leaders in government.

An example of the compromises they made along those lines is found in the Congress. Some Founders believed Congress should be controlled by the people. (Keep in mind that “the people” at that time, in most of the states, meant white, male property owners, even limiting property owners to a handful who owned lots of property.) But other Founders were not even confident that the citizens of the day were qualified enough to elect members of Congress, and were especially concerned that the power of states, especially state legislatures, could be undermined by an overly democratic Congress. 
Therefore, they reached a compromise. They created a Congress with two houses, one elected by citizens and the other elected by state legislatures. The members of the House of Representatives would be elected by citizens. The members of the Senate would be elected by the members of the state legislature in each state. That was intended to ensure that the Senate would be full of the wisest elder leaders of each state, since it was expected that the legislatures would know and choose two high caliber individuals to represent the state in the U.S. Senate. 

It was not until 1913 that the Constitution was amended to require states to let citizens elect the members of the U.S. Senate. In other words, for 125 years, we continued to have an essentially undemocratic process for electing members of the U.S. Senate. And it was only the result of a long campaign by a grassroots Progressive movement that the Constitution was finally amended to make it more democratic.

So that brings us back to the Electoral College. Belying the same concern about the ability of average citizens to know and choose the wisest people in the country to serve as President, the Founders created the Electoral College. In their eyes, the wisest people in each state (probably the same elder statesmen who would be considered good candidates to serve in the Senate) were the only ones who could be trusted to know and evaluate the wisest and most capable leaders from across the country and select the one person who is best qualified to serve in such an important office as President of the United States.

That is the essence of why we have the Electoral College in the first place: the Founders did not trust us.

How Does the Electoral College Work?

The original idea the Founders had about the Electoral College was that the legislature in each state would select the members of the Electoral College. In other words, they saw the selection of the members of the Electoral College as a similar process as they created to elect members of the U.S. Senate. The members of the legislature would know who are the wisest and most capable citizens of their state to serve in the Electoral College.

Then the idea was that the members of the Electoral College would gather in one place to deliberate and make a selection for the President of the United States. So, imagine it as something like the Catholic Church’s College of Cardinals which selects the Pope. These wise men (and of course, at that time, it would have only been men), representing the various states, would gather and hash out all the issues surrounding the best choice for the next President. Then they would vote, and voila, we have a new President! (It is not clear whether the Founders thought the announcement should be made with white smoke.)

Of course, something the Electors could take into account was the popular vote. In other words, the states did begin holding preference elections, allowing citizens to indicate who they thought the next President should be. (If you read the actual text of the U.S. Constitution about how the President is to be chosen, there is no reference to a popular vote. That is something the states added on their own.) And the members of the Electoral College were wise to take those results into account. But most of the Founders would have assumed that the Electors should not be bound by the popular vote. 

At least that was the idea at first.

But very quickly, things began to change. The most significant change was the development of political parties.
The U.S. Constitution says nothing about political parties, per se. Political parties, as we have come to know them, were not given a defined role under the Constitution. In fact, the right to form a political party stems not from any language in the original Constitution written in 1787, but rather stems from the First Amendment, adopted in 1789. In other words, when the Founders created the Electoral College in Philadelphia, they were not designing it to accommodate parties. In fact, some of the Founders thought political parties would be a very bad thing for the new republic. They even believed that some of the mechanisms they created were designed to avoid the establishment of political parties.

But their efforts notwithstanding, political parties formed anyway. At the state level, parties became very powerful vehicles for organizing government. And to the extent that politics at the state level played into the structure and politics of the national government, parties became embedded into the federal government.

To that end, regarding the process of choosing a President, political parties began looking for ways to control the process as much as possible. Therefore, parties grafted themselves on to the Electoral College. Furthermore, because of the design of our system, we have gravitated toward dominance of the system by two big parties. So, really, when we talk about parties influencing or even controlling the Electoral College, we are primarily talking today about the Republican and Democratic Parties.

In the Electoral College, this is how it works:

First, the political parties have a process to nominate someone as their preferred choice for President of the United States. That process has changed since the 1800’s, and most would say it is more democratic today than it was in 1824. (The complicated story of how the parties nominate a candidate for President is beyond the scope of this article, but it is a fascinating and disturbing story worth reading.) Suffice to say here that each party has a process to choose one person from the entire nation to serve as the nominee of that party.

Then, each state conducts an election for its citizens to weigh in about the nominees chosen by each party. Technically, each state has a process by which nominees from the party become qualified to appear on the ballot in that state. And the rules vary by state. For example, in some states, it is easier for third party nominees to get on their ballot, which is why you will have some third party candidates appearing on the ballot in some states but not others. However, when it comes to the two big kahunas – the Republican and Democratic nominees – you can be sure that national nominees of those two parties will be on the ballot in every state.

But that is not the official part of the process.

The official part of the process is another decision made by the party in each state. And that decision is made by party insiders, not by the citizens of the state. It may vary somewhat from state to state, but usually, this decision is made at a meeting of the state party (probably called a convention).

The decision made by the state party is to pick a group of people – called a slate – who agree that they will vote for the nominee of the national party if they become members of the Electoral College. The total number of people selected by the party is equal to the total number of Electoral College votes allotted to that party’s state.

So, for example, Arizona had eleven Electoral College votes for the 2016 presidential election. Long before November, following Arizona law, the respective chairmen of the Arizona Democratic and Republican parties each submitted to the Arizona Secretary of State the names of eleven individuals to be that state party’s nominees for election to the Electoral College. (There were likewise lists with 11 names for the Libertarian and Green Parties, both of whom qualify to place candidates on the Arizona ballot. Again, this process applies to third parties that qualify in each state, but our focus in this summary is on the two major parties, whose candidates dominate the process.) The result was a list of 11 Republicans and a separate list of 11 Democrats, all of whom were pledged to vote for the national party’s nominee. 

Sort of. (This is where it starts to get a little nutty.)

The party chairmen tend to pick party insiders like themselves to serve as candidates for the Electoral College. Since they are party insiders, they are likely to be committed to whomever the national party nominates and follow through on a pledge to vote for that candidate. But in some states, those Electors are allowed to vote for someone else once they actually gather with the other members of the Electoral College. These are so-called “faithless” electors, who appeared to be committed to the national party’s nominee, but when they actually get to the Electoral College, changed their mind and vote for someone else. And this has happened before. Not often, and it hasn’t ever changed the overall result. But it is possible.
In other states, the state legislatures have passed laws that prevents “faithless electors.” In other words, in those states, the members of the Electoral College are required by law to vote on the first ballot in the Electoral College for the national party’s nominee.

Arizona is not one of those states. Therefore, in Arizona, an Electoral College member from that state could change his or her mind once the Electoral College convenes.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves. How do we decide which party’s Electoral College nominees (the two lists of 11 names in Arizona, for example) are elected?

In all but two states, the group of Electoral College candidates is elected based upon which party’s nominee wins the majority of the popular vote in that state. So, keeping with our Arizona example in 2016, Donald Trump won a majority of votes cast by citizens in Arizona for the Republican Party’s Electoral College slate of nominees. Therefore, all 11 of the Arizona Republican Party nominees for the Electoral College were elected. None of the Arizona Democratic Party’s 11 nominees was elected, even though Hillary Clinton won 45 % of the popular vote in Arizona.

It is an all-or-nothing election for Electoral College. (The exception is in two states – Nebraska and Maine – which allocate two types of Electors: two on a statewide basis, and one for each congressional district. Therefore, it is possible to have Electoral College members split between Republicans and Democrats in those states, if the nominees of different parties win a majority in different congressional districts. But the other 48 states and D.C. run it as all-or-nothing.)
So, to summarize the Arizona example: on November 8, 2016, the 11 nominees for the Electoral College selected by the Arizona Republican Party were elected because a majority of voters in Arizona checked the box next to Donald Trump’s name.

But the election was not over. In fact, the election for President of the United States had not yet taken place. The true election was on December 19, when the members of the Electoral College met to officially cast their votes. (The entire Electoral College does not actually gather in one place. Rather, the members in each state gather somewhere, usually the State Capitol, and call in their vote to Washington D.C.)

So, on December 19, it is possible that one of the 11 electors from Arizona could change his or her mind and cast a vote for someone other than Donald Trump. (By the way, they could vote for anyone, not necessarily even someone who was a candidate for President.) It is very unlikely, because these 11 individuals are very loyal to the Republican Party, and would probably face a severe reaction from their fellow party members for refusing to support the party’s nominee. But in a state without a “faithless elector” law, it is possible.

At last, on December 19, the official vote for President takes place. The 538 members of the Electoral College scattered across the 50 states and the District of Columbia call in their votes, and the official election of the President is announced.
Yes, you head that right: about 40 days after the American people went to the polls mostly thinking they were directly electing the next President of the United States, the actual election takes place.

And in 2016, as it happened in 2000, that selection of the President by the Electoral College was not the same person whom a majority of the voters selected in November.

How Does the Loser of the Popular Vote Win the Election?

It’s all about math. (We know: nobody told you there would be math involved, right?)

Now that we are clear that the American people are not actually electing a President, but are electing a slate of individuals from their state who will then elect the President, let’s look at how that breaks down state by state.

First, let’s look at the number of electoral votes allocated to each state. The total number of electors nationwide is 538. That is not some random number. It is a number equal to adding up the total membership of the U.S. House of Representatives (435) and the total membership of the U.S. Senate (100), plus 3 members to represent the residents of the District of Columbia. So, 435 + 100 + 3 = 538.

Since this total number is based upon the states’ representation in the U.S. Congress, the total number of votes for each state is also determined by the number of members they have in the Congress. That means that every state is guaranteed to have 3 electoral votes, regardless the state’s population. And that is why D.C. has 3 electoral votes, effectively treating D.C. as a state for the purpose of the Electoral College.

Since every state is guaranteed at least 3 electoral votes, that means the smallest state – Wyoming – with a population under 600,000 people, gets the same number of votes as a larger state with only one member in the House (for example, Montana has more than 1 million people, but also had only 3 electoral votes in 2016). But it also means that the two “extra” guaranteed electoral votes based upon membership in the U.S. Senate gives the voters much more influence in the ultimate outcome than those same two electoral votes in a large state.

Look at it this way: in Wyoming, two of their three electoral votes represent 0.37 percent of the total vote of the national Electoral College, and those two votes are 67 percent of that voter’s share of the state’s vote. But in California, those same two “extra” votes, which represent the same 0.37 percent of the total national Electoral College vote, are only 2 out of 55 total votes, or 3.6 percent of that voter’s share of the state’s vote. In other words, a voter’s influence on the ultimate outcome in Wyoming is 18 times greater than a voter in California.

That probably sounds confusing, but here’s the bottom line: a group of small states can potentially have more influence on the election of the President than a few large states.

And that is exactly what has happened in recent elections.

In the 2016 election, the 21 states (plus D.C.) represented 11% of the national population, but their electoral votes represented 18% of the Electoral College total. And those states broke 59 to 36 electoal votes for Trump. So the voters in those smaller states, which were predominantly states favoring Trump, had an advantage over voters in larger states. To emphasize the point, of those 21 smallest states, Trump won 13 of them. Those 13 states comprise only 7.58% of the national population, but they comprise 11% of the Electoral College, so Trump received a greater boost in his Electoral College vote than he would receive in the popular vote. That is the inherent “small state advantage” built in to the Electoral College.

The second way that the “math” of the Electoral College distorts the ultimate result is the consequence of the winner-take-all contest in 48 of the states. In any state, when all of the electoral votes go to the winner of the popular vote, no matter how slight the margin, that means the losing candidate’s popular vote contributes to the national total in the popular vote, but does not get counted in the Electoral College.

Therefore, if the winning candidate narrowly wins some “swing states” but gets very few votes in some other states (especially larger states) that vote overwhelmingly for the loser of the popular vote, that is the formula for a mismatch between the Electoral College winner and the national popular vote winner. And that is exactly what has been happening in recent elections.

Most of this mismatch is occurring because a handful of large states have come to represent a large share of the national population. For example, even if you look at just metropolitan areas within states, the nine largest metro areas represent 25% of the entire U.S. population. Those metro areas touch 10 states, which collectively represent 44% of the entire U.S. population. But those ten states represent only 39% of the Electoral College. Therefore, the popular vote in large urban areas is underrepresented in the Electoral College.

The trend in recent years is for most of those metro areas to be heavily Democratic. Therefore, there is a growing concentration of popular votes for Democratic candidates in cities, which are underrepresented in the Electoral College. And often, in the presidential election, the Democratic candidate wins those areas with large margins, effectively “wasting” the extra popular vote on underrepresented electoral votes.

Meanwhile, a large group of small states have been much more reliably Republican in their voting patterns. In those states, the Republican candidate may likewise win by large margins, but the low numbers of popular votes for the Democratic candidate doesn’t outweigh the large numbers they receive in the metro areas. Therefore, the large group of smaller Republican-leaning states get much more advantage in the Electoral College than they do in the popular vote.
And that is the crux of the problem. Because of the distortions of both the small state advantage and the “wasted” urban vote, the Electoral College is becoming more and more disconnected from the will of the people as represented by the popular vote.

As long as we continue to become more and more urbanized, this problem is likely to continue. Therefore, the 2000 and 2016 elections may not be anomalies. This may become routine: the winner of the popular vote may continue losing the Electoral College.

And this trend is undermining public confidence in democracy.

The American people believe they are and should be electing their President. But they aren’t.

That is why poll after poll proves that the American people are ready to abolish the Electoral College.If

​

If you are convinced that now is the time to end this madness, join Count the Majority today!