What Is the Electoral College? Choosing a President Without a National Vote

Each state receives a number of electors equal to its total representation in Congress, meaning its House seats, which are proportional to population, plus two senators, which every state has regardless of size. The District of Columbia was given three by amendment in 1961, making 538 in total and 270 the winning threshold. Forty-eight states and the district award all their electors to whoever wins the state, with Maine and Nebraska instead awarding two statewide and one per congressional district. Voters technically vote for a slate of electors pledged to a candidate, whose names appear on the ballot in some states and not others. The electors meet in their state capitals in mid-December, the votes are sent to Congress, and a joint session counts them in early January, a procedure whose details were clarified by legislation in 2022 after the disputed certification of 2021.

The framers at the 1787 convention considered several methods and disliked all of them. Election by Congress would make the executive dependent on the legislature and destroy the separation of powers. A direct national vote was rejected for a mixture of reasons that are argued about: a genuine belief that ordinary voters in a country of that size could not know candidates from distant states, a concern that large states would dominate, and, unavoidably, the interests of slave states, since the three-fifths compromise counted enslaved people for apportionment without letting them vote, which inflated southern electoral weight in a way a direct popular vote would have removed. The compromise was a body of electors chosen however each state legislature decided, expected to exercise independent judgement. Almost none of the original design survived: electors do not deliberate, states award them by popular vote, and political parties, which the framers did not anticipate, organise the whole thing.

Several effects follow directly from the arithmetic and from winner-take-all allocation:

• •A candidate can win the presidency while losing the national popular vote, which has happened in 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000 and 2016
• •Voters in small states have more electoral weight per person, because the two senate-derived electors are the same for Wyoming as for California, giving Wyoming roughly three times the electors per voter
• •Campaigning concentrates almost entirely on a handful of competitive states, since a vote in a safe state changes nothing, and in recent cycles the great majority of campaign events and advertising have occurred in fewer than a dozen states
• •The system amplifies margins, so a narrow national win often produces a decisive-looking electoral result
• •It also amplifies the consequences of very small margins in a few places, since a few tens of thousands of votes in three states have twice decided a presidency
• •Faithless electors, who vote against their pledge, have appeared occasionally and never changed an outcome, and the Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that states may bind and replace them

Defenders make several points that deserve stating fairly. It requires a candidate to build a coalition across regions rather than running up margins in a few dense population centres, which supporters argue protects the interests of smaller and rural states in a federal system where states are constituent parts rather than administrative districts. It contains disputes geographically, since a recount is confined to the state where the margin is close rather than being a national recount, which a direct popular election would make necessary in a close race. It produces a clear winner quickly in most cases. And it is consistent with the federal structure of the constitution generally, in which the Senate and the amendment process also weight states rather than people. Critics answer that the coalition-building argument does not survive contact with the evidence, since campaigns ignore most of the country including most rural states, which are safe for one party and therefore unvisited.

Abolition requires a constitutional amendment, needing two thirds of both houses of Congress and ratification by three quarters of the states, which is not available while the system advantages one party and the smaller states. More than seven hundred amendments have been proposed over two centuries, and the closest any came was in 1969, when a direct election amendment passed the House overwhelmingly and was filibustered in the Senate. The alternative route in play is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, in which states agree to award their electors to the national popular vote winner, taking effect only once states totalling 270 electoral votes have joined; it has been adopted by states holding around 209 as of recent counts, and its constitutionality under the clause requiring congressional consent for interstate compacts is untested and would certainly be litigated. States could also individually switch to proportional or district allocation, which two already use, and which no large state will do unilaterally because it would reduce its own influence.

Each state gets electors equal to its House seats plus two, so smaller states are overweighted, and forty-eight award all of them to the state winner, which is why a candidate can lose the national vote and win the presidency, as has happened five times. The design was a compromise in 1787 reflecting distrust of direct election, the interests of large and small states and the arithmetic of slavery, and almost none of its original logic survives. Abolition requires an amendment that will not pass, and an interstate compact offering a workaround is short of the threshold and legally untested.