USA

Why Does The Electoral College Still Exist?

The founders laid out a system for electing the president in the Constitution. But today, it means some voters are much more powerful than others.

Addy Baird BuzzFeed News Reporter
Reporting From Washington, DC
Posted on October 16, 2020

Jonathan Drake / Reuters
North Carolina's Electoral College representatives give a thumbs-up after they all affirmed their votes for Donald Trump, Dec. 19, 2016.

WASHINGTON — More than 14 million Americans have already voted in the presidential election — but none of them actually voted directly for the president.

Because of the Electoral College system in the United States, you’re not actually voting for former vice president Joe Biden or President Donald Trump; voters cast their votes for electors, who in turn cast their votes for president.

The Electoral College system is laid out in the Constitution and was envisioned by the founders as a system of voting in a time when there was little mass media, when many Americans would not have access to much information about the candidates. But on five occasions, the winner of the popular vote and the winner of the Electoral College have not been the same: It happened in 2000, it happened in 2016, and it could easily happen again in 2020.

Polls have consistently found that a majority of Americans dislike the Electoral College and would prefer to elect the president by popular vote.

But because the system is laid out in the Constitution, it’s pretty difficult to change. Doing so would require a constitutional amendment, approved by two-thirds of both the House and the Senate as well as three-quarters of the states. (Another option for amending the Constitution is having two-thirds of state legislatures call for a constitutional convention and then get three-quarters of the states to sign off on the amendment, but that’s never happened in US history.)

Since the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791, there have been 17 amendments added to the Constitution. The most recent addition was the 27th Amendment, passed in 1992. Because of the extremely high threshold for passing an amendment, it’s unlikely that abolishing the Electoral College would be successful in Congress at all, especially given that the system has tended to benefit Republicans in recent decades.

The Electoral College has meant that voters in rural areas — usually white people — and smaller states have significantly more influence at the ballot box than voters in big cities, where more people of color live and vote. For example, as the Washington Post has reported, about 586,000 people live in Wyoming, and the state has three electoral votes. More than 39 million people live in California, but the state has just 55 electoral votes, meaning that one voter in Wyoming has about 3.6 times more power than one voter in California.

The issue became a hot topic during the Democratic primary — though Biden broke from many of his fellow Democrats and said he did not support abolishing the Electoral College.

Some states are trying a new tactic to end its use: So far, 15 states and the District of Columbia have entered into an agreement called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC).

The idea is that, rather than awarding their electoral votes to the winner of the state’s popular vote, the group of states will give them to the winner of the national popular vote. (The agreement is currently suspended in Colorado, however, and there’s an initiative on the ballot in the state to decide whether it will stay in the coalition.)

According to the NPVIC, including Colorado’s Electoral College votes, the coalition currently represents 196 electoral votes. If enough states joined — representing more than 270 votes, the number needed to win the Electoral College — the group could essentially guarantee the winner of the presidency is the winner of the popular vote.

How The Electoral College Favors White Voters

Non-white voters are more likely to live in "safe" states, sapping their electoral power.

John Templon  BuzzFeed News Reporter

Posted on November 7, 2016

The Electoral College system gives more voting power to some races over others.

The average white non-Hispanic voter could have nearly two times the influence on this election than the average Asian voter, according to a BuzzFeed News analysis. Why? Geography. The high concentration of Asian voters in certain “safe” states, ones that are almost certain to break for one party or another, means that they have less influence on the ultimate outcome of the election.


John Templon/BuzzFeed News

Note: Some demographic groups in this analysis overlap.

We conducted an analysis of the relative strength of each registered voter by race by combining data from the U.S. Census’s Voting and Registration data by state and race with FiveThirtyEight’s “Voter Power Index.”

It’s important to note that this analysis does not account for who actually voted, only who was registered in 2012. Also, the demographics of each state have likely shifted in the four years since. Still, this analysis shows the outsized influence that certain demographics have on the electoral process.

BuzzFeed News also analyzed other dimensions, such as gender, education, and income, but the differences were not as significant as just looking at race alone. Even though much has been made about Donald Trump’s white, non–college educated base, this analysis suggests that those voters will not have any more of an impact on the election than the typical white voter.

According to FiveThirtyEight, “The ‘Voter Power Index’ is the relative likelihood that an individual voter in a state will determine the Electoral College winner.” Swing states that could potentially tip the election (such as New Hampshire, Nevada, Colorado, North Carolina, and Michigan) have high “Voter Power Index” scores, whereas states with large Democratic or Republican majorities (such as Wyoming, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Maryland and Massachusetts), are at the other end of the scale.

Our analysis found that every registered white non-Hispanic voter in 2012 has the influence of about 1.05 registered voters. For registered Asian voters it was just 0.58, and for Hispanics it was 0.87.

In 2012 registered Asian voters were concentrated in “safe” states such as New York, California, Texas, New Jersey, and Illinois, all of which are not projected to have a big influence on the 2016 election.

But the system does present problems: If, for example, a Republican wins the popular vote, Democratic strongholds like California and New York (both of which have entered into the coalition) would have to award their votes to someone whom the majority of the state voted against.