The Electoral College Is Built To Fail
The Electoral College is Built to Fail
Why the system is rigged no matter who wins
On Nov. 8, Donald Trump became the second president-elect in living memory to win the election, but lose the popular vote. And we may need to get used to that sort of thing.
The last time this happened was in 2000, when President George W. Bush lost the popular vote to contender Al Gore by a margin of 543,895 votes. By comparison, President-elect Trump lost the popular vote by a margin of nearly 2.8 million votes and counting, the largest in American history.
This is not unprecedented. The president has lost the popular vote five times in total - with three of those occurances happening in the mid-1800s.
According to Harvard professor and Pulitzer Prize finalist Alex Keyssar, that isn't rare. In a hearing before Congress, Keyssar said, "On 17 other occasions...75 thousand votes or fewer turning would have produced the same outcome (of the president losing popular vote)."
Meaning, it didn't happen, but it easily could have - in almost 30 percent of all U.S. presidential elections.
But that's how the system works. That system being the electoral college.
The Electoral College
The history of the electoral college is ugly. In an effort to convince Southern states to ratify the Constitution, distribution of the presidential electors was tied to states' congressional representatives, which already gave a sizable advantage to Southern states by counting slaves as three-fifths of a person. You might recall this from your high school history class as the Three-fifths Compromise.
By agreeing to this compromise, the founders forever bound the electoral college as a system of unequal distribution - where some votes counted for more than others.
That is still in effect today. A voter in Wyoming casts a vote that is in effect 0.00531 percent of an electoral vote, whereas a voter in California casts a vote that's only worth 0.000147 percent of an electoral vote. Each Wyoming voter has nearly three times as much influence on the final result as a Californian.
Some, including President-elect Trump, argue that this inequality is beneficial to the country, as it ensures that the concerns of the minority (in this case, those living in smaller states) aren't ignored in favor of the majority (those living in larger states).
As populations flock to more urban and diverse areas, the problem of unequal electoral influence magnifies (particularly if people cross state lines) and increases the chances for a candidate winning the presidency but losing the popular vote.
But, as a discussion with Princeton political professor Oman Wasow pointed out, there will soon be a mandated redistribution, or reapportionment, of representatives - and thus electoral votes. After each Census, electoral votes are redistributed based on changes in population. The new numbers will take effect after the 2020 election and remain valid for 2024 and 2028.
This does not truly fix the inherent inequality in the electoral system due to the clause that guarantees each state (and D.C.) three votes regardless of population.
Changing Demographics
What also complicates matters is race and America's changing demography.
Already, the majority of children being born in America are minorities. At some point, those will kids grow up and tip the scale. In 2014, the U.S. Census Bureau projected that the U.S. population will reach majority-minority status by 2044.
Minorities traditionally vote Democratic, by a margin of about 89 percent. Because of this, the way that political science analysts measure minorities' growing influence on the election is their ability to turn traditionally red states blue.
After losing minority voters by anywhere from 58 to 93 percent in the 2012 election, Republican party leaders issued a post-mortem in that outlined strategic outreach to minority voters in an effort to secure voters for the future, particularly Hispanic voters.
That didn't exactly happen this year.
No End in White
In contrast, Trump doubled down on underemployed and undereducated white voters in key states – Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina – despite the shrinking population of whites nationally. The number of conservative white voters in these states, combined with the electoral value of their states, rendered the 2.8 million vote margin for Clinton moot.
Race may not be the sole element in the election narrative, but it is difficult to separate. It is important to note that significant minority growth is mostly concentrated in large-population states in the Sunbelt, like California and Texas. If you look at the states that Trump carried (including the ones he flipped), most of them will remain majority white well into 2060 - that's 26 years past the point when the national population becomes majority-minority. These perma-white states are the same states where voters are overrepresented due to the electoral college.
"The electoral college exacerbates influence of whites at the expense of minorities," said Bernard Fraga, a political science professor at the University of Indiana.
Independent researchers at the Center for American Progress projected when each state would reach majority-minority status and when their voting eligible population would reach majority-minority status. The Census Bureau last did state by state projections in 2005, but a source in the bureau says demographers plan to conduct new projections by 2020.
It is likely that minority populations will grow to the point that they will eventually flip traditionally red states, starting with the larger populated ones.
However, recently introduced voter ID laws may slow down minorities' ability to flip red states. A federal court recently struck down a North Carolina voter ID law because it "target[ed] African Americans with almost surgical precision." North Carolina is one of 17 states that passed more restrictive voter ID laws within the last four years, including Texas and Virginia. Virginia's law was recently upheld by a federal court.
"If you have [the GOP] doubling down on white voters specifically, it’s a winning formula," said Fraga. "It’s a scary formula….but there’s a point in the future where that will no longer work due to the size of the minority population [in large red states]."
Majority[-minority] rules
One shock to the system will be Texas. The state is already majority-minority, but Texas' voting-eligible population is projected to reach majority minority status by 2019 - just before the next presidential election. And according to Fraga, that means it's going to flip, much like California did in 1992.
In a sense, that flips the narrative as well. At some point (assuming minority voting patterns remain consistent) the election will be decided by only a few large-population states - consistently in favor of the Democrats. Again, due to the electoral college.
"No matter which way it goes…it will never reflect the will of the people...The electoral college is not designed to do that," said Fraga.
Essentially, the only way to ensure that the people's candidate reaches the White House is to have that candidate be directly elected by the people. It puts every single vote in play, independent of the state in which it is cast.
Reforming the system
There have been talks before about transitioning to a direct-election system. The process is incredibly difficult as it would take a constitutional amendment. Amendments have much stricter procedures for passage than ordinary laws. They must be passed by a super-majority in both houses of Congress and then be ratified by a three-quarters of the states. Or be preposed by a supermajority of states and passed via constitutional convention.
There was a major attempt in 1950 called the Lodge-Gossett Amendment. It passed with a super majority in the Senate, but died in the House.
Some states are working around the amendment process by agreeing to the National Popular Vote Interstate Contract. In it, states agree to award their electoral votes to the popular winner, regardless of how their state voted. The agreement would go into effect once enough states signed on - and their collective electoral weight reached 270 votes. However, such a contract is liable to be struck down by the federal government.
Following this election, outgoing Senator Barbara Boxer (D - CA) sponsored a bill that would amend the constitution to eliminate the electoral system. It is not expected to pass.
"No electoral reform is neutral…people win with the current system…Why would they have incentive to change it?" said Fraga.
But on Dec. 6, for the first time in 20 years, Democrats in Congress held a forum to discuss the role of the electoral college in modern American politics.
While there, Keyssar noted that it had been exactly 200 years since a national popular vote was first proposed in 1816.