The Electoral College: 10 Fascinating Facts
/Originally published by the League of Women Voters Greater Green Bay
I’m from the “old school,” convinced through my history and civics education that our nation was, from Day One, a shining, perfect example of pure democracy. I’ve always revered our U.S. Constitution – the oldest surviving written constitution, underpinning the world’s oldest surviving democracy – as flawless, ingenious, and impeccable.
Now, in my old age, I’ve come to realize the fantasy behind that magical view, and I’ve learned to accept that our founders were simply imperfect humans under terrible stress, with extraordinary vision circumscribed by the realities of a recent war. They did a fabulous job – for the moment – and set us up for success. What they provided for us in Philadelphia in 1787 was a remarkable feat – a starting point, a great plan for a handful of states in the late eighteenth century, and, ultimately, a roadmap for a journey they couldn’t possibly imagine.
Now cognizant of that reality, I’m determined to help make our constitution more appropriate to twenty-first century America. That journey begins with a dispassionate, practical view of the electoral college, which we all assume is the only – or at least the best – way for a democracy to elect a president. Now I know the truth, and I want to share it. So here are ten facts about the electoral college that you might find quite interesting.
Formation of the electoral college was a final, desperate compromise. Those assembled were exhausted and running out of time, but they had to decide how the president would be chosen, decade after decade, for centuries. Maybe Congress, as representatives of the people, should choose him. (It had to be a “him” back then.) Or perhaps all the white, male property-owners could cast a vote. But how and where and when? And how could ordinary citizens even know of potential candidates? So, after days of wrangling, casting ballot after ballot with no decision, the constitutional congress agreed on a compromise: Informed, educated men in each state would come together every four years and collectively agree on a president based on his merits: our electoral college.
It has failed us five times! In five presidential elections over 200 years, the electoral college has chosen the candidate who received fewer votes than his/her opponent. In 1824, 1876, and 1888 the people voted for one man, and the electoral college chose the other – the “loser.” And we all remember 2000, when Al Gore received 48.4% of the national popular vote and George Bush received 47.9%. However, Bush won 30 states via the electoral college, and so the candidate elected by the people did not become president. And, of course, the 2016 election is fresh in our minds, when Hillary Clinton won 48.2% of the national popular vote, but Donald Trump, with only 46.1% of the votes, became president, having won 30 states’ electoral votes.
Forty-eight states interpret the role of the Electoral College very narrowly. They cling to the state-based “winner-take-all” philosophy, meaning that the candidate who gets the most popular votes in our state will get all our national electoral votes, regardless of what the national popular vote was. Therefore, if the person who received the lower percentage of popular votes nationally receives the higher percentage within the boundaries of our state, we’ll go with the national “loser,” who is our “winner.” (That explains the five examples cited in #2 above. And each state has the right to do this. Per Article II, Section 1 of our constitution, each state may decide how to choose its electors.)
Such an interpretation creates the inequity of “battleground states.” Why invest campaign dollars in states with predictable outcomes: “red” or “blue” states? Because we must win those state electoral votes, almost always in a “winner-take-all” scenario, let’s focus on the seven states we absolutely have to win. In the 2024 presidential election, therefore, 94% of general election campaign events were held in just seven “battleground states”: 62 in Pennsylvania! 45 in Michigan! 40 in North Carolina! 37 in Wisconsin! But not a single general election campaign event in Washington, Wyoming, Maine, Oklahoma...
The result is understandable voter apathy and disengagement. If you don’t feel your vote counts, why vote? And, if you live in any one of 48 “winner-take-all” states and you suspect you’ll vote contrary to the state’s majority, why bother? Your vote will never make it past the electoral college. On top of all that, just think of the confusion: Am I really voting for president? What does the electoral college have to do with it? And is the electoral college really a group of “informed, educated men” who are going to engage in a thoughtful, nonpartisan process? Hmmm...
Amending the constitution to end the electoral college would be nearly impossible. Our constitution has certainly been amended in the past – 27 times in 238 years. So, what would an amendment take? Each amendment requires agreement by 2/3 of both the US House and the Senate. Or 2/3 of the states can agree to request a constitutional convention, followed by ¾ of the states ratifying whatever amendment comes out of that convention. So, good luck with that.
But there is a reasonable work-around: an Interstate Compact. Any number of states with a shared problem can agree to a solution that establishes cooperation and mutual recognition. States may notagree to a compact with a foreign power or a compact that increases their political power in such a way that it encroaches on federal authority. But, yes, per Article 10, Section 1, of the US Constitution, states can come together to agree on how they’re going to apply their own rightful authority to solve a problem in a way that is mutually agreeable. Such an interstate agreement does require congressional approval. The possibility of applying this concept to electing the US president was legally tested in 2019.
And they already have! A work-around is already well on its way to success. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact was launched way back in 2006! Seventeen states and the District of Columbia have already signed on! They have agreed to allocate all of their electoral votes (a total of 209 at this point) to the presidential candidate who has won the greatest number of votes from the American people nationwide. And seven additional states have introduced the Compact for consideration. If they’d add their 65 total votes, they would be casting, collectively, 274 electoral votes to the presidential candidate who won the national popular vote. And it takes only 270 to win the election! They’d still be working through the electoral college, but they’d align their work with the popular vote. Every vote would count.
The League of Women Voters has supported NPVIC since 2008. First came a two-year study of the proposal, then adoption of a concurrence supporting NPVIC in 2010. The League found the proposal an acceptable method to achieve direct popular vote for the president until the electoral college can be abolished. In 2018 LWVUS added advocacy for the NPVIC to the Campaign for Making Democracy Work, and in 2024 they initiated the “One Person One Vote” campaign that includes advocacy for NPVIC.
A well-intentioned, outdated, unneeded dinosaur can be put to rest. Our founding fathers, God bless them, did the best they could 238 years ago, but they were fallible human beings, working under pressure, struggling to meet immediate and short-term needs. To change the way we elect our president now does not in any way diminish the value of our US Constitution or demean the work of the founders. I would bet Hamilton and Jefferson and all the rest would be pleased to see us thinking critically and working to adapt well-intentioned but outdated procedures to a country that is now markedly different from the one they knew.
So, I guess that makes me a civics grown-up now. I accept that our constitution wasn’t perfect – and that’s okay. I accept that the electoral college didn’t continue to work in quite the way it was envisioned; that’s okay too. But I fully support the “one person, one vote” concept by which our president will truly be elected by the American people, and I now see how that can be accomplished through the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
No doubt this effort is going to encounter pushback. It occurs to me that not every American is committed to “one person, one vote.” I imagine there are others who, like me, believed for years that the electoral college must be the best alternative, because our founders chose it. Now I understand that it was simply a desperate compromise, and we may feel comfortable working around it. Let’s get going!