10% OF U.S. Presidential Elections Failed, Blame the Electoral College.

by Yaj Jhajhria

Edited by Taruni Manam & Arushi Patil, Layout by Alison Ye

The United States Presidency is a role transcending the boundaries of its name. While the office maintains its purpose of directing the executive branch of the United States, the nation’s recent escalation to being the world’s one true superpower grants the choice of the American people the greatest power vested in any U.S. public official, along with a level of military and cultural influence around the globe to the likes of no other individual. Currently, Forbes lists Donald Trump, the incumbent U.S. president, as the third most powerful person on Earth, higher than Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, or the Pope.[1] The responsibility to select a leader lies in the hands of the citizens of America. At least, it should. But of the 58 presidential elections conducted, at least five of them (almost ten percent) have featured a winner who more Americans voted against than for.[2] This inherent lapse in our democracy can be attributed to the electoral college, the body of electors that choose the president.

Your State Probably Doesn’t Matter

In a democracy, equality should be something to take for granted. With 538 electoral votes, an even distribution of electoral votes would make each represent 574,000 Americans, according to 2010 census data.[3] Yet this is not the case. The electoral college distributes votes by giving each state two to begin with, then adds more proportionately, giving smaller states like Wyoming and Delaware two more than they should have, while Texas and California are missing six and ten votes, respectively. As a result, someone in Wyoming’s vote counts four times as much as a Californian’s

. This is intentional: when the Constitution was created, rural voters were generally much poorer than urban ones, and they intended to prevent the upper class from gaining too much influence. That generalization, however, is outdated. Data from the United States Census Bureau shows that with its large populations of every minority in the United States, California has a higher poverty rate than Wyoming, yet its citizens are worth one-fourth the average Wyomingite.[4][5] This all leads to the worstcase scenario in an election, where a candidate wins the electoral vote by getting just over half of the votes in the forty smallest states, thus securing the presidency despite 78 percent of the nation voting against them. While this is the most extreme scenario, it demonstrates the terrifyingly low minimum popularity to succeed. This is partially because winners in a state take all of the votes.

You Probably Don’t Matter

In the previous example, the other half of the people who didn’t vote for the winning candidate were simply not represented. This is problematic for the opposition in states controlled by one party. Anyone living in a safe state for their opposing party is out of luck because their vote no longer counts. This leads to lower voter turnouts, continuing the cycle further. With most states already guaranteed to vote one way, however, this means that every time, the election comes down to a handful of swing states. Candidates then adjust their policies to appeal to these voters, leaving the rest of the country underrepresented in the Oval Office.[6]

That’s Barely Even Half of the Problems

In addition to all of this, more issues remain. Even if one party wins the election in a state, that state can distribute the votes however they please. Then, those votes do not automatically go to a party, but to selected people who go to a convention to cast their vote officially, even though nothing prevents them from voting for literally any person. This has occurred in the past and could potentially change the victor months after the election, during inauguration preparations. Additionally, gerrymandering is a frequently used practice of redrawing district lines to give more representation to white voters and fewer votes to people of color. In 2018, this caused Democrats in North Carolina to win 48 percent of the vote but only 23 percent of Congressional seats.

Plus, the distortion of governance, disadvantage for third parties, and the very real possibility of a tie (where each state then gets one vote to break the tie) are all enormous monkey wrenches that are thrown into the strained engine that is democracy. This has caused the election results to wildly misrepresent the wishes of the American people, and for power to be granted to the wrong hands. Right now, it does not feel like the people choose politicians –because they do not. The politicians choose the people.

References

Forbes. (2018). The World's Most Powerful People. Retrieved September 2, 2020, from https://www.forbes.com/powerful-people/list/ History. (2020, July 23). 5 Presidents Who Lost the Popular Vote But Won the Election. Retrieved September 2, 2020, from https://www.history.com/news/presidents-electoral-college-popularvote -20

United States Census Bureau. (2010). Decennial Census by Decades. Retrieved September 3, 2020, from https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/decade.2010.html

United States Census Bureau. (2019). U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: California. Retrieved September 4, 2020, from https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/CA

United States Census Bureau. (2019). U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: Wyoming. Retrieved September 4, 2020, from https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/WY

Prokop, A. (2016, December 19). Why the Electoral College is the absolute worst, explained. Vox. Retrieved September 8, 2020, from https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/7/12315574/electoral-college-explained-presidentialelections-2016