OPINION: The U.S. Electoral College is Undemocratic

By Samuel Garrison, Flashlight Contributor

In the United States, the winner of every election is determined by whichever candidate receives the most votes with one major exception. The presidency, the most powerful office in the country, is decided by the Electoral College, a wildly undemocratic system that creates and exacerbates inequalities. Whether it’s from the winner take all approach most states follow, swing states effectively putting the presidency in the hands of just a few states, smaller states are given disproportionate voting power for their size, or that a person’s vote is mathematically less valuable in some states than others, the Electoral College is a fundamentally flawed election system, so much so that most voters would prefer a popular vote system compared to the system we have now.

The Electoral College works by assigning each state and the District of Columbia a number based on its representation in Congress (how many House Representatives they have plus two Senators) where whichever candidate wins the most votes then wins all the electoral votes that state has to offer, regardless of how narrow the win was. In this winner take all system if a candidate wins a state with 51% of the vote to 49%, that candidate would get all of that state’s electoral votes, essentially nullifying the vote of the 49% of people who voted for the another candidate. Furthermore, if you live in a state that reliably votes one way or another, you may assume your vote is unnecessary and sit out a presidential election. This means that in a very real way, the Electoral College can discourage people from voting. After all, if it’s clear which way the election will go it’s easy to rationalize staying home.

This brings us to swing states, which are another symptom of the Electoral College. One of the original purposes of the Electoral College was to ensure candidates had to appeal to smaller states to win, not just large populous areas. The idea was to make sure every state had influence in the election, but as the country developed, it wasn’t big states that became highly targeted by presidential campaigns, but swing states that could go either way. Now, instead of being dominated by New York City and Los Angeles, we instead see presidential elections decided almost just by states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Florida. Because of this, votes in states like California or Texas are considered free points for the candidate they lean towards. You can safely guess how those states will vote, and because of that candidates fight over the fickle states every election cycle, meaning a vote in PA matters more to the outcome of the election than a person’s vote in Washington. Washington is a safe bet, but Pennsylvania is up in the air.

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On the level of the states themselves, the worth they’re assigned is heavily lopsided as well. On average, one electoral vote represents about 436,000 people, but that number fluctuates depending on each state’s population. This means that states with fewer people to each electoral vote have a higher voting power than other states do, as they’re getting the same representation for fewer votes, and states with larger populations where each electoral vote equals more people means that their electoral power is cheapened. To put this into clear numbers, Wyoming has 3 electoral votes with each electoral vote representing only 143,000 people (keep in mind one Electoral College vote on average represents 436,000 people). New York has 29 electoral votes, and each electoral vote represents about 500,000 people. This means that an electoral vote from Wyoming is worth 3.49 times the worth of an electoral vote from New York and about 3.05 times the worth of an average electoral vote.

Put another way, the Electoral College system is literally valuing the votes of some people more than others based on which state they live in. Not only that, but when a state only has so many electoral votes to give, turnout in the state means very little. For example, if you live in Wisconsin and for some reason only 1,000 voters turned out, the winner of the state would still get all 10 electoral votes Wisconsin has to offer. But suppose 1,000,000 people turned out to vote in Wisconsin. Wisconsin would still only be worth 10 electoral votes. Because the Electoral College limits how much each state is worth, turnout is irrelevant. In fact, it means as more people turn out to vote, an individual vote is worth less. If an electoral vote represents on average 436,000 people, but you can win an Electoral College vote with only 100,000 people voting, then those 100,000 people have the same influence as the 436,000 people. We’re using a system in which the more people turn out to vote, the less an individual’s vote matters.

Back when our country’s political system was being developed, the founders were concerned with creating a system that would give power and value to all states, not just the populous states. To do that, they created the Electoral College, which gave additional representation to smaller states so that to win, candidates would need to appeal to their needs as well. However, what the Electoral College system has created feels more like an unbalanced board game with rules that favor some players over others. In the past 7 presidential elections, the Democratic nominee won the popular vote 6 times, and yet lost the presidency twice (once in 2000 and again in 2016).

This isn’t about giving one party a leg up over the other but giving accurate representation to the American people. Regardless of party, a country should get the representation the people vote for and support, and any system that allows a minority of people to control the outcome of an election that affects everyone can’t be considered an effective democracy by any measure.