The Electoral College

Making Sense of a Maligned Part of the U.S. Electoral System

“Although much of the focus of citizens, media, and educators is on the national political scene, most of the decisions that have the most profound effects on the day-to-day lives of Americans happen in state and local governments.”¹

-Dr. Mark Rozell, George Mason University and Dr. Clyde Wilcox, Georgetown University.

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My wife and I play a lot of Scrabble. After a string of games where one or the other would win several games in a row, we were certain we had a more just and equitable way to play. We began by dividing the letters equally; each got the same number of frequent letters like “A” and “E.” We each got one of the high-value letters like “Z” and “X.” Throughout the game, we picked our letters out of our own bag. We were sure that this would make the game more fair. It didn’t.

During the last few electoral cycles in the United States, many have become convinced that we can develop a more fair electoral system than the one we have; including getting rid of the Electoral College system. Before we change the rules it would be wise to understand where they came from and why we have them.

Those who govern nations face a dilemma. On the one hand, they must secure the equality of all citizens. On the other hand, they must protect the distinctive needs, capacities, values, and policy preferences of their diverse populations. Different countries have attempted to solve this dilemma in three different ways.

Unitary government: Countries like France, Japan, Israel and Ghana set laws at the national level. They have the continual challenge of applying national laws in very different local situations.

Confederation: There are no pure confederations presently, but Switzerland, the European Union, and the United Arab Emirates share many aspects of a system in which loose coalitions of sovereign states agree to combine their efforts in particular governmental tasks.

Federalism: Most large or populous nations have three levels of government; national, regional and local, which share a significant amount of power. These include Australia, Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, India, Canada, Germany, and Russia. Some smaller countries with ethnic and linguistic distinctions, like Malaysia and Belgium have also adopted a federal system.

The United States began as a confederation of thirteen states. In 1787 state delegates gathered in Philadelphia to revise their Articles of Confederation. Instead, they drafted a constitution that replaced the confederation with a federal government.

Today, the United States has a very complex system of federalism. More than 90,000 governmental units including states, counties, cities and townships, water and land conservation boards, school boards, library boards, and many more are responsible for tasks our citizens hold important.

The national election was a key issue of debate at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. States with smaller populations complained that a popular national election, where one person received one vote, would cause their states to be overlooked. After numerous alternatives were suggested and rejected, delegates developed a plan called “the Electoral College.”

Many U.S. citizens aren’t fully aware of how the Electoral College functions. Rather than carrying out presidential elections at the national level, elections are carried out at the state level. Each state has two senators. The number of representatives in the House is determined by the population in each state. For example, California has 2 Senators and, because of their population, 52 members in the House of Representatives. States with the fewest people, like Delaware, Vermont, and Wyoming have two Senators but only one representative in the House. The number of electoral votes in each state equals the number of people they have in Congress. So California has 54 electoral votes and Wyoming has 3.

Each state determines the way that their electoral votes are distributed. Forty-eight states award 100% of their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote in their state. Two states, Maine and Nebraska, distribute one elector to the candidate who wins the popular vote within each district represented in the House. The two additional electoral votes, represented by their two Senators, are given to the candidate who has won the popular vote in the state as a whole.

The Electoral College ensures that national candidates pay attention to states with smaller populations as well as states with larger populations. They must all be taken into account to win the Presidency. The electoral College ensures that everybody has a voice in the United States, no matter where they live.

The Scrabble game between my wife and me ended with one side soundly defeating the other.² We continued to get lopsided letter choices, one of us getting too many vowels and the other too many consonants. Not only that, but by dividing the letters we severely limited the creative options we had in our word choices. There is a reason that Scrabble is played like it is. If we play Scrabble it is far better to play by the rules.

Though many are frustrated when their candidate loses the Electoral College while winning the popular vote, there is a very good reason for our system. It has worked well for us for more than two centuries. And if we consider this most recent election as a stress test for our system of electing Presidents, it has to be said, regardless of whether your side won or lost, that it passed the test. As they have in every U.S. Presidential election, the candidates had to consider every state regardless of population. Our system gave a clear result, in both the popular vote and the Electoral College. Rather than trying to change the rules, our political parties need to develop better strategy when they “play the game.”

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1. Rozell, Mark J. and Wilcox, Clyde, Federalism: A Very Short Introduction (2019: Oxford University Press) p. 12.

2. My wife wanted me to include the name of the person who was winning Scrabble at this time. She was.