The Electoral College

Majority Rule?

In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes and lost the presidency. In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote by over 500,000 votes and lost the presidency. If you’re keeping score at home, that’s two out of the last six elections where the person more Americans voted for didn’t become president.

In 2024, Donald Trump won both the popular vote AND the Electoral College—the first time a Republican had pulled off that double victory in twenty years. So the system can work as intended. It just doesn’t always.

Confused? You should be.

Where Does This Come From?

The Electoral College wasn’t actually called the “Electoral College” by the Founding Fathers. The Constitution refers to “electors.” The term came into common use in the early 1800s and wasn’t officially written into federal law until 1845. The word “college” comes from the Latin collegium—a society of colleagues united for a common purpose—similar to how the College of Cardinals selects the Pope. The idea was that the most knowledgeable individuals from each state would gather to select the president based solely on merit, not popularity.

Why didn’t they just let people vote directly for president? Two reasons, and they’re both a little uncomfortable to talk about in polite company.

Reason #1: No Kings

The Founders had just fought a war to get rid of a king. They rejected the idea that power should be inherited—passed down through bloodlines based on hereditary entitlement rather than merit or consent. They were not about to create an all-powerful executive who could claim a direct mandate from the people. Indirect election was a buffer—a way to keep the president from becoming too popular, too powerful, too kingly.

Reason #2: The Masses Are Not to be Trusted

Let’s let the Founders speak for themselves on this one.

Alexander Hamilton called the American people “a great beast” and argued that turbulent masses seldom judge correctly. Gouverneur Morris—the primary author of the Constitution’s final draft and one of its most influential delegates—was even more direct about the common people: “The mob begin to think and reason, poor reptiles.”

The Founders feared mob rule. They were utterly opposed to direct democracy. They believed that wiser, better-informed representatives should make decisions instead of letting the unwashed masses fill the most important roles in government themselves. So, they created a system where informed electors—presumably gentlemen of property and education—would meet in their respective states, deliberate thoughtfully, and choose the best person for the job.

The Constitution gives states enormous power over how electors are chosen. Article II, Section 1 states that electors shall be appointed “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” This means each state legislature decides how to select its electors. Initially, some state legislatures simply appointed electors themselves without any popular vote. Over time, states moved to letting voters choose, but the Constitution still leaves the method entirely up to each state.

Spoiler alert: That’s not how it works anymore. Today’s electors are party loyalists who show up, vote the way their state voted, and go home. There’s no deliberation. No thoughtful consideration of merit. They’re rubber stamps.

But we still have the system.

How Does It Actually Work?

Here’s the short version: Each state gets a number of electors equal to its total number of senators (2) plus representatives (which varies by population).

The Constitution originally set a ratio: no more than one representative for every 30,000 people, with each state guaranteed at least one. The number of representatives each state gets is recalculated every ten years based on the census, and states then redraw their congressional district lines accordingly—a process that directly affects how many electoral votes each state has.

However, the House wouldn’t grow forever. The Reapportionment Act of 1929 capped the House at 435 members, where it remains today (except for a brief period when Alaska and Hawaii joined the union). If we’d kept the original 1:30,000 ratio, we’d have over 10,000 representatives today. Congress decided that would be unmanageable, so they fixed the total and now simply reallocate those 435 seats among the states every ten years based on population shifts.

Today, there are 538 total electors (100 senators + 435 House members + 3 for Washington D.C.). To win the presidency, you need 270.

In most states, it’s winner-take-all. This means candidates don’t campaign in most of America. They campaign in “swing states”—the handful of states where the outcome is uncertain. If you live in Massachusetts or Alabama, presidential candidates ignore you. Your state is already decided. But if you live in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, or Arizona? Congratulations, you’re very important every four years.

The January 6 Certification (Or: When Things Get Really Weird)

So the election happens in November. The electors vote in December. But the whole thing isn’t official until Congress counts the votes on January 6.

Why January 6? Because of the Electoral Count Act of 1887, passed ten years after the absolute disaster of the 1876 election. That year, Samuel Tilden and Rutherford B. Hayes were in a dead heat, and several states sent competing slates of electors. Congress had no formal procedure to resolve the mess, which dragged on for months. Eventually, a special 15-person commission decided the election 8-7 along party lines in favor of Hayes. Democracy!

Congress decided they needed actual rules, so they passed the Electoral Count Act requiring Congress to meet on January 6 at 1 p.m. in the House Chamber, with the Vice President presiding, to count electoral votes in alphabetical order by state.

For over a century, this was pure ceremony. Boring. Predictable. Then came January 6, 2021.

The vague language of the 1887 law was exploited to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. Republicans in seven states signed false certificates claiming to be proper electors. John Eastman, Trump’s attorney, proposed that Vice President Mike Pence could unilaterally refuse to count legitimate votes or count the fake ones instead. Pence refused. A mob stormed the Capitol trying to stop the count. (See also: Insurrection, Sedition & Treason)

Congress eventually passed the Electoral Count Reform Act in 2022 to clarify that the vice president’s role is purely ceremonial—no power to reject votes, no authority to overturn elections. It only took an insurrection to figure that out.

Recent Examples (Or: When the System Breaks)

2000: Bush vs. Gore

Al Gore won the popular vote by 543,895 votes. George W. Bush won the Electoral College 271-266 after the Supreme Court stopped the Florida recount. Bush won Florida by 537 votes out of nearly 6 million cast. Those 537 votes in one state decided the presidency, despite Gore winning more votes nationwide.

2016: Clinton vs. Trump

Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2,868,686 votes. Donald Trump won the Electoral College 304-227. Trump won Michigan by 10,704 votes, Wisconsin by 22,748 votes, and Pennsylvania by 44,292 votes. Those three states—a combined margin of 77,744 votes—flipped the election.

2024: Trump vs. Harris

Donald Trump won both the popular vote and the Electoral College. For once, the system worked as advertised. But it was the first time a Republican had won the popular vote since 2004—a twenty-year gap that tells you something about how often this system produces results that don’t match what most Americans voted for.

The Gerrymandering Connection (See Also: Chapter 8)

Here’s where things get even weirder. Remember how each state’s electoral votes are based on its number of representatives plus senators? The Senate was designed to protect states’ rights—every state gets two senators regardless of population. This means small states have disproportionate power in both the Senate and the Electoral College.

Consider this: California’s population is roughly 39.5 million. Wyoming’s population is about 588,000. That means California has about 67 times more people than Wyoming. But in the Senate, they have equal power: two senators each. And in the Electoral College, Wyoming gets 3 votes (2 senators + 1 representative) while California gets 54 votes (2 senators + 52 representatives).

Do the math: California has one electoral vote per 731,000 people. Wyoming has one electoral vote per 196,000 people. A Wyoming voter has nearly four times the influence in electing the president as a California voter.

But it gets worse. Those representatives come from congressional districts, and those districts are drawn by state legislatures—often in absurdly partisan ways. (See: Gerrymandering, Chapter 8.) So not only does the Electoral College make some votes count more than others, but the number of electors each state gets is influenced by how creatively state politicians draw district lines. It’s a system built on top of another system, both of which can be manipulated.

Why Does It Matter?

The Electoral College means presidential candidates focus on a handful of swing states and ignore everyone else. It means a few thousand votes in Pennsylvania matter more than a few million votes in California. It means the person most Americans vote for can lose.

Defenders argue it protects small states from being ignored. Critics argue it already ignores most states—just different ones. Defenders say it prevents candidates from only campaigning in big cities. Critics point out that candidates already only campaign in a few places, just not the places where most people live.

The real question is whether we still believe the Founders’ premise: that the masses are “poor reptiles” who can’t be trusted to pick a president directly. If we don’t believe that anymore—and most of us don’t—then why are we still using a system designed around that belief?

What Would We Lose?

If we got rid of the Electoral College and went to a national popular vote, we’d lose the theoretical protection of small states. Wyoming would matter even less than it does now (which is saying something). Presidential candidates would focus on where the most voters are, which means cities and suburbs.

But here’s what we’d gain: Every vote would count equally. A Republican in California would matter. A Democrat in Alabama would matter. Candidates would have to care about all Americans, not just Americans in swing states. And the person most Americans vote for would actually win.

Of course, getting rid of the Electoral College would require a constitutional amendment, which requires two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of states to agree. Small states would have to vote to make themselves less important. So don’t hold your breath.

In the meantime, we’re stuck with a system designed by people who called us reptiles, named after a process that doesn’t happen, and certified on a date that once sparked an insurrection.

Democracy 2.0, everyone.