With the United States’ 60th presidential election approaching, American citizens are encouraged to register as voters. However, electoral votes, cast by states’ representatives in the electoral college, ultimately determine the election’s winner, rendering popular votes irrelevant and undermining their impact on the presidential polls. Electoral ballots do not accurately reflect American democracy but instead are inherently rooted in systemic inequality.
The electoral college system is a compromise between a popular vote — each individual’s vote — and a vote amongst US Congress Representatives. Taking into account the popular votes of individual states, all electoral votes of a state are given to the candidate who wins its popular vote. A candidate needs 270 electoral votes — the majority — to win the election. During the 2020 presidential election, President Joe Biden narrowly won Georgia’s electoral votes by 49.47% over President Donald Trump’s 49.24%: a difference of roughly 11,779 votes. Georgia has 16 electoral votes — determined by its number of representatives in Congress — all of which were given to Biden in the 2020 election.
Consequently, there have been five instances in American history where presidential candidates have won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote and lost the election. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 2.9 million votes, yet Donald Trump’s victory in the electoral vote made him the president. In 2000, Albert Gore received 543,895 more popular votes than George W. Bush, but Bush won 271 electoral votes, becoming president. The results of the presidential election depend solely on the quantity of electoral votes candidates receive, rather than the American popular vote.
The electoral college is rooted in racial discrimination. As stated by the Center for the Study of the American Constitution, in the 1800s, the enslaved counted towards states’ populations as three-fifths of a person by the Three-Fifths Rule, while lacking voting rights. However, the free Whites of the Southern states, who had more enslaved people than the North, were allowed more electoral votes and political influence. This notion still manifests today, with voter ID laws like photo ID requirements that significantly decrease election participation of individuals of color — skewing voting impact to White voters and undermining the impact of African American ballots.
Over the years, America has seen a growing desire to switch to the popular vote system. Over 1,000 amendments proposed to change or eliminate the electoral college — all of which have been turned down.
Additionally, the electoral college causes voters from “swing states” — states where electoral votes could “swing” to either the Democratic or Republican party — to hold disproportionately more leverage on the election’s outcome compared to states “safe” for a party.
Today, the US is the only nation using the electoral college system to elect its president. Over the years, America has seen a growing desire to switch to the popular vote system, as voiced by over 65% of 9,720 American adults according to a Pew Research Center poll, and over 1,000 amendments proposed to change or eliminate the electoral college — all of which have been turned down.
According to University of Central Florida History Professor John Sacher, aside from technical complications with amending the Constitution, the US continues to use the electoral college system for two main reasons, the first being to mute fraudulent votes. However, fraudulent votes are extremely uncommon in US elections and barely impact polls in the first place; the League of Women Voters found that out of 250 million mailed votes between 2000 and 2020, there were 193 convicted cases, meaning an individual is more likely to be struck by lightning than they are to cast a fraudulent vote.
The second is to prevent candidates who do not win more than 50% of votes from winning the election. However, America has a predominant two-party system — it is highly unlikely that more than two parties ever split the polls so closely. In addition, this discrepancy is much larger in the electoral vote, as it enables those who lose the popular vote by a large margin to win the election and does not reflect the majority’s opinion at all.
The electoral vote is an inaccurate measure of America’s choice for president, failing to reflect the voting preferences of minority groups in states where their political views are not the majority. Instead of reinforcing a flawed system of exclusivity, today’s presidential elections must reflect America’s forward progress in democratic practices and equal rights.
